FOUR LECTURES 



OX 



SPIEITUAL CHKISTIANITY. 



LONDON : 

R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL. 



FOUK LECTUEES 



SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY, 

DELIVERED IN THE 

HANOVER SQUARE ROOMS, LONDON, 
March, 1841. 



ISAAC TAYLOR. 



LONDON : 
JACKSON AND WALFORD, 

18, ST PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. 
1841. 



.13 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



These Lectures were delivered at the instance of the 
Committee of the London City Mission/' and if 
that Committee be held responsible for having made 
the request, its responsibility there ceases. For 
whatever the Lectures may contain the Lecturer 
alone is answerable, and he supposes it not un- 
likely that more than two or three passages might 
be adduced with which neither that Committee, as 
a body, nor the members of it as individuals, would 
fully concur. The Lecturer confidently hopes, 
nevertheless, that, in frankly expressing his sincere 
convictions, as he is accustomed to do, he has not 

aS 



Vi ADVERTISEMENT. 

infringed the proprieties of the position he occu- 
pied, as called forward on this occasion by them. 

In so calling him forth, his much-esteemed friends 
were aware that the Lecturer has never been used 
to speak the language of any one section of the 
religious commonwealth ; and while well assured 
of his firm attachment to the great principles of 
the Gospel, as recovered by the Reformers, they 
would anticipate, as probable, some freedom of 
expression, on particular points. 

It is due, as well to those who honoured the 
Lecturer with their attendance, as to his friends of 
the London City Mission," to state distinctly that, 
in revising the Lectures for the press, he has not 
merely made many verbal corrections, but has intro- 
duced more than a few passages tending, as he hopes, 
to strengthen or illustrate his argument ; and it 
is among these added passages that will be found 
the more distinct expressions of his individual 



ADVERTISEMENT. vii 

views on points connected with the present aspect 
of our English Christianity. 

It can scarcely be necessary to forewarn the 
reader not to look, in these Lectures, either for a 
systematic digest of Theology, or for a formal biblical 
argument, in support of the several articles of an 
evangelic creed. The Lecturer has not thought him- 
self qualified to undertake any such task ; nor would 
any endeavour of the kind have consisted with the 
professed intention of the Lectures, which were pro- 
jected with the hope of directing the attention of 
well-educated persons to the great principles of 
the Gospel; and especially as at this moment put 
in jeopardy by the wide diffusion of opinions which 
would substitute the " vain inventions " of anti- 
quity, for the purity and simplicity of apostolic 
Christianity. 



Making no pretensions therefore to speak as a 
master of theology, the Lecturer has ventured, as 



Viii ADVERTISEMENT. 

he Supposes a private Christian may do without 
blame^ and especially if his years have been de- 
voted to religious studies — to present some broad 
views of those principal articles of belief^ in the 
truth and import of which all Christians are alike 
concerned. 



Stanford Rivers^ 
April, 1841. 



CONTENTS. 



FIRST LECTURE. ?age 
The Exterior Characteristics of Spiritual Christianity . 1 

SECOND LECTURE. 
The Truths peculiar to Spiritual Christianity .... 67 

THIRD LECTURE. 
The Ethical Characteristics of Spiritual Christianity . Ill 

FOURTH LECTURE. 
Spiritual Christianity the Hope of the World at the 



present Moment 153 

NOTES. 

Note to Page 34 . 199 

Note to Page 40 200 

Note to Page 77 202 



THE 

FIRST LECTURE. 



ON THE EXTERIOR CHARACTERISTICS OF SPIRITUAL 
CHRISTIANITY. 



ON 



SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY. 



FIRST LECTURE. 



There may be those who, in comparing the physical, 
or even the moral condition of civilized and of bar- 
barous nations, would give the preference to the 
latter ; alleging that, on the whole, more enjoyment 
is secured, and less suffering entailed by a lower, 
than by a more advanced development of the social 
system. But let such a question be determined as it 
may, yet is it certain that, except as the consequence 
of national catastrophes, sudden or slow in their 
operation, no community recedes from the position 
it has reached ; or, by a voluntary act, renounces 
knowledge and the arts, and embraces barbarism. 

Advancement, which is the Law, as well of the 
human mind, individually, as of the social system, 
forbids a deliberate return to what is more simple, 
after what is more complex has once been attained : 
for, to step back on its path, would imply that a 

B 



ON SPIRITUAL 



people should not merely cease to desire what they 
have learned to enjoy ; but that they should consent 
no longer to know, what they had ascertained to be 
true ; and should learn to believe as true, what they 
have discovered to be false ; and should persuade them- 
selves to act in a manner which experience has taught 
them is equally absurd and mischievous. Even there- 
fore if savage life did present itself to the view of a 
civilized people as a paradise ; yet between it and 
themselves there is interposed a gulf, into which, 
indeed, many a nation has been plunged headlong, 
but which none can pass by spontaneous movement. 

There may too be those, and perhaps they are 
more than a few, who, knowing little of Christianity 
except in its incidental connexion with secular affairs, 
over which it too often throws perplexity ; — knov/ing 
nothing of its truth, or its energies, or its beauty ; 
and not knowing, or not considering, that every other 
form of religion is utterly destitute as well of truth, 
as of any power to bless, imagine that an equitable 
comparison between the religion of Europe, and the 
religions of Asia, would exhibit but an ambiguous 
advantage in favour of the former. Or such persons 
may persuade themselves that an innocuous pan- 
theism, upon the bosom of which all consciences 
might be lulled, would indeed be a happy exchange 
for the stirring verities of the Bible. 

Yet even if it were so, no such exchange can ever 
be offered to our choice ; for Christianity, like civi- 
lization, and in a much deeper sense, is a movement 
forward. Christianity is a system of truths which has 



CHUISTIANITY. 



3 



carried the human mind as far in advance of ancient 
philosophy, as it has of false religion. It is no scheme 
of vague opinions, which may be indifferently refuted, 
or admitted ; but a progress in abstract truth — and a 
progress in moral sentiment — and a progress in man- 
ners, v^hich, though its future course may be arrested 
by calamities falling upon the human family, could 
not be freely renounced but by an act of desperation, 
fatal to the social existence of the people that should 
attempt it. 

Christianity is a development, and the only deve- 
lopment ever yet given, of those higher faculties of 
human nature, v^hich although they may long slumber, 
yet when once awakened, will not be curbed by the 
limitations of time; — they will not; for their scope 
lies far forward in the field of Eternity. 

Christianity, like civilization, may be overborne 
at diff*erent points, or turned from its course ; but it 
must recover its lost ground. It is a guardian power, 
which has long been carrying the human family, as 
in its bosom, over a rugged road, and beneath in- 
clement skies ; but will not be stayed until it have 
fulfilled its trust. 

We grant indeed that a general decay of religious 
belief, throughout Europe, is an event which does 
not want some indications of probability. But if we 
suppose it to have taken place, its visible effects would 
every where be those of a turn of tide ; or the reflux 
of a deep current, heretofore setting heavenward (how 
stormy soever may have been its surface, or slug- 
gish its movement). It would be a reflux towards 

B 2 



4 



ON SPIRITUAL 



whatever is sensual, selfish, frivolous, and ferocious. 
Like the loss of civilization — the loss of Christianity 
would be equivalent to a ceasing to know, a ceasing 
to feel, a ceasing, in the best sense, to live ; or the 
living on a principle confessedly earthly, after a higher 
principle has been recognised. 

At this moment the hold of Christianity upon tlie 
convictions, the moral sentiments, and the manners 
of several of the nations, called Christian, is in the 
last degree feeble ; nevertheless, so long as, even in 
such countries, the Gospel is yet publicly regarded as 
true, and so long as its decisions are appealed to as 
of divine authority, the community, low as it may 
have sunk in virtue, has still its eye directed upward 
toward that which is purer and more elevated, as well 
in faith as in morals, than any thing else around it. 
Even, therefore, to such communities, the ceasing to 
be Christian would not be the coming to a stand 
merely ; but the commencement of a descent towards 
an abyss. 

But to a community within which the Gospel has 
widely diffused itself through the opinions, habits, 
and affections of the mass, and in which it intensely 
affects the moral energies of thousands ; the ceasing 
to be Christian would be a dissolution, political, 
social, domestic : it would be — national death. 

In this country every institution which at once 
fortifies and adorns our social condition, has been 
constructed on the supposition of a flow and pressure 
in this one direction ; — that is to say, toward what- 
ever is, or is assumed to be, true in religion, and pure 



CHRISTIANITY. 



5 



in morals : — every slope in the basement of the politi- 
cal building is adapted to this, and to no other move- 
ment of the waters : should they turn, there is 

not an embankment which must not yield, and add its 
fragments to the general ruin. 

Throughout southern Europe, where an almost 
stagnant neap-tide of moral feeling has for ages 
covered the surface of society, the turn toward open 
Atheism might show itself only in the drooping of 
heads, this way, instead of that, upon ecclesiastical 
levels ; but it could not be so in England. England, 
and her affluence at home, and her influence through 
the world, and her bright cluster of ancient honours ; 
England, and her pure domestic affections, and home 
felicity, and her generous temper, and her wide phi- 
lanthropy ; England, her power and her embellish- 
ments, we may be assured- — is fated along with the 
Gospel. — The waters of the sanctuary stand breast 
high around her, and should they fall off*, she herself 
falls, to rise no more. 

In this, if in no other country, Christianity, much 
as it is dishonoured, yet rules in theology, and is the 
standard of morals, and gives sanction to law ; and, as 
an arbiter, acknowledged by all, mediates between 
angry factions. But more than this, it is by far the 
most profound of the forces now at work within the 
social system ; — it is a force not controllable by any 
secular, or ordinary means, inasmuch as, for the sake 
of it, thousands amongst us, if challenged to do so, 
would relinquish goods, and life itself. Amid our very 
agitations it still consolidates its power; and even 



6 



ON SPIRITUAL 



spurious zeal, (if there be any) breaks up the 
ground for its advances. Atheism itself has lately 
strengthened it by a reaction ; while the sudden, and 
unlooked for revival, in oar times, of ancient super- 
stitions, directs a new attention to its simple truths. 
Christianity comes to our times as the survivor of all 
systems, and after confronting, in turn, every imagi- 
nable form of error, each of which has gor.e to its 
almost forgotten place in history — itself alone lives. 

In philosophic scorn we may turn from the perusal 
of the history of Christianity, during its eighteen 
centuries past, blessing ourselves in a thence-derived 
indifference towards all religion. But feelings such 
as these sDrinsf from modes of thinkins^ that are loose 
and unphilosophical. What we should discern in the 
course of events, on the stage of European affairs, 
during this lapse of time, is — ^not so much a series of 
interested frauds, of imbecile illusions, of fanatical 
violences, borrovnng a sanction from religion; but 
rather a s^ow m^ovement, of vast compass, yet tending 
always towards a high m^oral end, however remote, and 
which higher end it is now visibly approaching. We 
have before us, in this history, a power which, even 
when most enfeebled or perverted, could lend a gran- 
deur even to folly, and a sublimity to extravagance; 
which has often imparted the energies of virtue to 
crimes ; which has never visited mankind with a 
scourge, withoat bringing up a blessing; and which 
now at length stands forward in no other character than 
as the reprover of violence, and of oppression, and of 
impurity ; and as the guardian of whatever is most 



CHRISTIANITY, 



7 



holy and happy. Its spirit and tendency, which once 
might seem ambiguous, are now, by universal acknow- 
ledgment, sunp^y benign. 

But we are sti]l reminded of the errors, or, to use 
the objector's own word, the inconsistencies of Chris- 
tians, even in these times, when, as we allege, our 
religion has recovered, in great measure, its pristine 
purity. Yet justly interpreted, this charge conveys the 
objector's own latent feeling, that Christianity is, what 
we are affirming it to be, an idea of perfection, which 
is in progress to exhibit its perfect symmetry. The 
objeci-or means to say that, should the time ever 
com-e when the relioion of Christ shall have mastered 
whatever row opposes its influence, and shall reign 
triumphant, in its own splendour, all men will have 
reached, under its guidance, a high stage of moral ex- 
cellence. The objector means to say that, should he 
survive to so happy a day, he himself, urged forward 
in the general movement, wi]l have become wise. 

The same momentous fact, namely, That the moral 
energies of the Gospel are, in great part, yet to be 
developed, indirectly attested as it is even by its 
opponents, is most cordially admitted by its friends ; 
who ind^'v'daa^^y acknowledge, with humiliation, their 
personal facing short of the ru^e of their profession. 
Or, if we listen to those whose office it is to urge 
this iu^e upon others, evidence to the same effect is 
every day borne by all ; for every pulpit exhortation, 
every didactic treatise, every urgent appeal made 
to the Christian community, as such ; and every 
incitement to zeal and dihgence in works of charity^ 



8 



ON SPIRITUAL 



speaks the same language, and attests the deep con- 
viction of each Christian bosom, that the heavenward 
impulses of the Gospel are in progress, only, towards 
their consummation in the virtue and happiness of 
mankind. 

What then are the genuine elements of this power, 
which, by the confession of all, is carrying forward 
the social system towards goodness and felicity ? 
What is Christianity ? 

In the present instance we have consented to employ 
a compound phrase, and are to speak of Spiritual 
Christianity. — Have we then in view certain refine- 
ments upon the broad principles of the Gospel ? Or is 
it our purpose to recommend some scheme of piety, 
elaborately imagined, and delicately framed, and eli- 
gible for the few, and barely to be understood even 
by them ? Indeed it is not. — We have no such pur- 
pose. We are not instructed to be the expositors or 
champions of partial notions, or of private conceits, 
or of fond peculiarities, or of mystifications ; or of 
anything that does not lie clearly upon the surface of 
the inspired pages. We are of no party ; we yield 
undue homage to no names ; we have no unconfessed 
solicitudes, no indirect purposes; we challenge for 
our faith and doctrine catholicity, in the highest 
and best sense which that abused word m.ay bear. 

By Spiritual Christianity, therefore, we mean 
nothing more, (and we can mean nothing less) than — 
Christianity itself : Christianity in its simplicity, in 
its grandeur, in its integrity, in its beauty. Chris- 
tianity, as it is truth absolute, truth eternal, truth of 



CHRISTIANITY. 



9 



infinite moment to every man, and intelligible to 
every man. 

In proof of the breadth of the view which we mean 
to take of the Gospel, we bind ourselves to ask for 
no practical concessions in behalf of Spiritual Chris- 
tianity which may not be demanded, as a necessary 
inference from some one of the principles that, 
without a doubt, are its visible characteristics. We 
inquire then what these visible characteristics are ? 

L 

In reply, We say First, that Christianity is a 
RELIGION OF Facts ; and we use the term in its 
plain historic sense. Christianity touches the affec- 
tions, and binds the consciences of men, on no other 
plea than that of its being a declaration of facts ; 
and these, either long past, or now passing ; or cer- 
tainly anticipated as yet impending. 

We have not therefore before us either a theory of 
abstract principles, or a system of sentiments, selected 
as excellent and refined, from among other eligible 
modes of feeling. We have not to do with a con- 
geries of the best things of all systems, or with a con- 
venient summary of the product of the wisdom of all 
times. We have not to recommend a rule for those 
who may think good to adopt it. We have before us 
nothing but a series of facts, and the just conse- 
quences of those facts. Christianity is historically 
true — it is true in its own sense ; or it can have no 
claim upon our serious regard ; and if, in vindicating 

B 3 



10 



ON SPIRITUAL 



the high claim it advances, we cannot maintain our 
position on open ground, accessible to all minds, we 
fail by our own showing; or, rather let it be said 
that, irrespeca^^e of the ability, or the want of ability, 
of any single advocate of christian principles, the 
Gospel demands our submission, purely on the 

GROUND OF ITS HISTORIC TRUTH. 

Is THEN Christianity historically true ? 

In the present instance we do not hold ourselves 
obliged to undertake an argument so often, and so 
conclusively conducted ; but rather we suppose our- 
selves entitled to assume this as granted ; nevertheless, 
we must, for a moment, trace a single line of con- 
nexion between the historical truth of the Gospel, 
and those principles of our moral nature, to which an 
appeal is necessarily made in asserting the reality of 
spiritual religion. 

What is it then which the question concerning 
the truth of Christianity supposes to be doubtful ; or 
what is it which can be regarded as open to argument 
among those who are at once well informed, and 
candid ? — Not the actual existence of Christianity, as 
a visible institute, up through the course of time, 
from the present age to that of the Juhan Cagsars. 
Nothing within the range of history — nothing ma- 
thematically demonstrated, is more certain than is the 
series of facts to which we now refer. Thus far then, 
we presume, there can be no controversy, or none 
amongst educated persons. Let church history be 



CHRISTIANITY. 



11 



what it may in its qualities, assuredly it is history — 
and this, close up to the moment of its alleged 
origination.* 

What then is it that may be further questionable ? 
Is it the antiquity and genuineness of the literary 
remains comprised in the canon of the New Testa- 
ment? If there be indeed room for reasonable 
controversy on this ground, the demur, be it what it 
may, must be dealt with, not in the mass ; but in 
detail ; not in the mode of vague suppositions ; but 
in that of a rigorous attention to every particle of the 
evidence, as severally bearing upon each separate 
portion of the document; — upon each book, each 
epistle, each paragraph, sentence, word, syllable, 
letter. There is no summary process by means of 
which a controversy h'ke this may be disposed of. 
The question, if indeed there be a question, is one 
of historical criticism ; and is to be determined in 
no other manner than by a diligent application of 
the rules of that now well-digested science. 

Nor can \c be necessary to remind well-informed 
persons, that the legitimate deductions of one science 
are not to be overruled by sidelong inferences, derived 
from another. The questioB being — whether Caesar's 
Commentaries are indeed Caesar's ; we are not to be 
told, as a sufficient reply, that the newest discoveries 
in human physiology, or that recent experiments in 

* The testimony of the Roman historian, to this effect, is by none 
called in question. Auctor nominis ejus Christus, qui Tiberio im- 
perante, per Procuratorem Pentium Pilatum, supplicio affectus erat. 
Tac. An. XY. 



12 ON SPIRITUAL 

chemistry, or that a doctrine derived, yesterday, 
from an excavation, does not favour the affirmative ? 
Nothing can be more impertinent or nnphilosophical 
than intrusions of this sort.^ 

But if there he a question concerning the antiquity 
or genuineness of any portion of the New Testament, 
the w^ell-informed Christian w^ill be the most eager 
to provoke, and the most assiduous in prosecuting 
the inquiry ; and if there are any who wish to evade 
it, it must be either the ill-informed Christian, or 
the too well informed infidel. 

But it is said that this critical argument in sup- 
port of the antiquity and genuineness of the several 
portions of the New Testament, is too recondite 
to be appreciable by the majority, even of well edu- 
cated persons." — Is it so ? — then it keeps company 
with the entire circle of the modern sciences, whether 
abstract or physical. 

Even in an assembly of well-educated persons, there 
are not many who would profess themselves to be 
competent to follow, intelligently, the demonstration 
which establishes the mechanism of the heavens, as 
now constituting the creed of Astronomy. Beyond 

^ But if, on grounds of philosophical justice, we thus protest against 
the interference of the physical or physiological sciences with the histo- 
rical evidences of Christianity ; the very same doctrine, must in all equity, 
be held to condemn the ill-considered zeal of those who, from mistaken 
religious motives, would fain interdict the advances of science, even 
when confining itself to its own ground, and when employing methods 
altogether unexceptionable. Those who have indeed made themselves 
familiar with the historic proof of Christianity, will be exempt from all 
solicitude as to the ultimate conclusions of Geology, or of any other 
science. 



CHRISTIANITY. 



13 



the walls of colleges, every thing in science is taken 
on trust ; and it is very safely so taken ; for all v^ell 
know, that the professors of science, in these times, 
mystify nothing ; and offer satisfactory proof in sup- 
port of whatever they affirm. Although there be few, 
in fact, who tread the paths of philosophy, there is 
neither bar at the entrance, nor labyrinth midway 
in the course. It should be remembered that, just in 
proportion as the results of modern science have 
become unquestionably certain, the proof of that 
certainty has become the more recondite, and so as 
to be fully intelligible only to those who devote their 
lives to the pursuit. 

So it is likewise on the field of historical criticism ; 
and precisely because the methods of proof now 
resorted to, are wide in their range, various in their 
elements, and rigidly exact in their inductions ; — it is 
because they are certain, that they are also difficult ; 
it is because they are circumstantially strong, nay, 
irrefragable, that they demand powers of attention 
severely disciplined, and many accomplishments, in 
those who would follow them through their ample 
circuits. 

We affirm then, that which will not be disputed 
by any who are competent to call it in question, 
that, in the authentic methods of historical criticism, 
rigorously and laboriously applied to the Christian 
documents, and to every separate portion of them 
(a very few passages or phrases being excepted) the 
genuineness of the books of the New Testament has, 
in our own times, been placed far beyond the reach 



14 



ON SPIRITUAL 



of all reasonable doubt. How difficult soever, or 
even impracticable it may be to render this sort of 
evidence fully intelligible to the imperfectly informed, 
no v^ell educated person can feel a serious difficulty 
in yielding h^'s absolute assent to it. 

Here then we set our foot upon a rock. But let 
it be well observed that, while the proof, could it be 
produced, of the spuriousness of one or more pas- 
sages, or even of ample portions of the received 
canon, would leave the Christian argument untouched, 
in the main ; on the contrary, unquestionable proof 
of the genuineness of any one considerable portion 
of that canon, would carry the whole weight of 
Christianity ; for such an attested portion could 
not be made to consist with the hypothesis of 
infidelity. 

To rid the world therefore, as the infidel might 
wish to do, of the Evangelic history, each of the 
Gospels, separately, and each of the Epistles, sepa- 
rately, must be proved to be spurious. One of the 
Gospels would save our religion ; or a single apo- 
stolic Epistle, like a morning star alone in the skies, 
when all other stars are obscured, would redeem the 
world from the darkness of Atheism. 

But if the books be genuine ; what is it further 
which may reasonably be doubted ? Instead of 
opening an extensive argument which has so often 
and so conclusively been handled, we shall confine 
ourselves to considerations proper to our peculiar 
subject. We are then to speak of Spiritual Chris- 
tianity, and to insist upon modes of feeling of a 



CHRISTIANITY. 



15 



kind to raise us above the low levels of frivolous 
pleasure, or of sordid secular avocations. By the 
very necessity of our subject therefore, we must 
make a frequent appeal to the moral sense, and 
must suppose, in the hearer, nol: merely conscience 
and candour; but the sensibilities and instincts of 
a well-ordered mind, alive, in some degree, to the 
sympathies of virtue. We are not professing to 
address those who have lived in too constant fami- 
liarity wi;:h what is gross or selash, to aPow the 
moral faculties to have retained their genuine force. 

Yet let it not hence be inferred that our argument 
is itself a refinement, not intelligible except to those 
whose mental quah'Qcations are peculiar. A vivid 
moral sense, and a just taste, even if they be rare in 
fact, are so, not because factitious ; but because in 
too many they have become blunted by a course of 
life, unfavourable to their exercise. Nor do we 
address ourselves to a fine discriminating moral 
faculty, as contradistinguished from the rude, yet 
native impressions o" uncultivated minds, and which 
would at once admit all that we are row to ask ; 
but rather as opposed to that which itself is opposed 
to nature, and to truth of feeling. 

A correct moral feeling, under the guidance of 
which he who possesses it makes his way with cer- 
tainty through the labyrinths of a crowded, sophis- 
ticated world, choosing, by its aid, his friend — his 
colleague, his agent, with a seldom-baffled tact, 
and holding himself at the distance of civility from 
many against whom he could bring no accusation — 



16 



ON SPIRITUAL 



this feeling, and this taste, the antennce of the mind, 
are as applicable to the persons of history, as to the 
persons of the present moment ; or to such of them, 
at least, as have become known to us, not through 
the artificial medium of rhetorical eulogies, but by 
the reports of unconnected contemporaries, who have 
related, as by accident, the less as well as the more 
important incidents of their private life, and have 
repeated, perhaps with little skill as to the selection, 
their conversations, and discourses. Brought to bear 
on such instances, the moral sense and taste, — or the 
instinctive feeling of what is true in human nature, 
and of what is harmonious and consistent with itself — 
are less fallible, we may boldly say, than direct 
reasoning, even of the severest sort; for in our 
reasonings, a false step, at the commencement, sends 
us far astray ; but as to the inductions of the moral 
sense, in gathering them up, we are feeling our path 
as we proceed, and at every step we get so much the 
nearer to truth and certainty. Logic takes us on a 
circuit, which, if the course be but correctly calcu- 
lated, brings us round to a legitimate conclusion. 
But the method of induction by the tact of the moral 
sense, is a walking with nature, on a day's journey ; 
and a making ourselves familiar with the sweet tones 
of her voice in a lengthened communion. 

We should however well observe the separate 
offices of the logic of critical evidence, and of the 
logic of the moral sense, as applied to the discrimi- 
nation of the genuine and the spurious in history. 
Thus, in the instance before us, it belongs to the 



CHRISTIANITY. 



17 



former, embracing the science of criticism as a sub- 
sidiary means, to trace, in the original records of 
Christianity — in their varied style, in their phrases, 
proper to the time, country, and writers — in their 
incidental allusions to persons, events, and usages 
— in their internal agreements, and not less, in 
their disagreements, the infallible marks of au- 
thenticity. Nor does any thing remain to be 
desired in the way of proof, in this line, which 
may not be found in many conclusive modern 
works. 

It is the office, moreover, of the historical logic, as 
applied to the Christian evidences, to show (and which 
may most certainly be done) that the memoirs of 
Christ have been derived from, at the least, three 
independent sources ; and therefore, that the suppo- 
sition, could it otherwise for a moment be enter- 
tained, of an imaginative creation of this altogether 
singular narrative, is totally excluded. 

The same species of argument, moreover, will 
exhibit the manifest incompetency of the writers of 
the Gospels — one and all, for the task of a literary 
creation ; and their competency for that only of 
furnishing an inartificial report of incidents and 
discourses. 

So far, a strict analysis of the entire mass of the 
evidence, and of the minute circumstances which 
attach to it, excludes every doubt that the evangelic 
history is — history. 

But now, after these rigorous methods of analysis 
have done their part, something remains w^hich, 



18 



ON SPIRITUAL 



in fact, if it can be satisfactorily achieved, carries 
conviction home to the mind in a manner not often 
if ever effected by a merely critical argument. 

We summon then to our aid, those powers of 
perception which, even iT they carnoi; clothe them- 
selves in words, and therefore cannot be conveyed 
distinctly from mind to mind, are not therefore the 
less to be elied upon. Yet let us not be misunder- 
stood ; nor let it for a moment be supposed that we are 
so forgetful of the principles of Spiritual Christianity, 
hereafter to be affirmed, as to attempt to hale things 
divine to the tribunal of the perverted moral percep- 
tions of the human mind. This we are not doing ; but 
are only endeavouring to bring the moral sense to bear 
upon objects which lie altogether within its proper 
range --^ — that is to say, upon human character, 
human conduct, and upon the well-known harmonies 
of the world o? mind, as exposed to our view in 
others, or as presented by our personal conscious- 
ness. 

Moreover we do rot hesitate to ask, that such 
faint conceptions as the human mind may of itself 
entertain, of the bright excellence of a better world, 
should be at hand, and give their testimony, so far 
as they may, in support of our conclusions; for it 
has ever been held that, if the spotless virtue of 
heaven were to appear upon earth, she would be 
recognised and reverenced, even by the most abject, 
or the most perverted of mankind. 

Read then the Gospels, simply as historical me- 
moirs : and by such aids as they alone supply, make 



CHRISTIANITY. 



19 



yourself acquainted with Him who is the subject of 
these narrations. Bring the individual conception^ 
as distinctly as possible before the mind: — a]]ow the 
moral sense to confer, in its own manner, and at 
leisure, wiA this unusual form o^ humanity. — Be- 
hold {he man"— even the Saviour of the woild, and 
say whether it be not historic truth that is before the 
eye. The more peculiar is this form, yet withal 
symmetrical, the m^ore infaP^ole is the impression of 
reality w^e thence receive. "What we have to do with 
in this instance, is not an undefined ideal of wdsdom 
and goodness, conveyed in rourd affirmations, or in 
eulogies ; but with a self-developed individuality, in 
conveying which the writers of the narrative do not 
appear. In this instance, if in any, the medium is 
transparent : nothing intervenes between the reader 
and the personage of the history, in whose presence 
we stand, as if not separated by time and space. 
' It may be questioned whether the entire range of 
ancient history presents any one character in colours 
of reality so fresh as those which distinguish the 
personage of the evangeh'c memoirs. The sages and 
heroes of antiquity — less and less nearly related, as 
they must be, to any living interests, are fading 
amid the mists of an obsolete world: but He who 
is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," is 
offered to the view of mankind, in the dyes of immor- 
tality, fitting a history, which, instead of losing the 
intensity of its import, is gathering weight by the 
lapse of time. 

The Evangelists, by the translucency of their style, 



20 



ON SPIRITUAL 



have given a lesson in biographical composition, 
showing how perfectly individual character may be 
expressed in a method which disdains every rule but 
that of fidelity. It is personal humanity, in the pre- 
sence of which we stand, while perusing the Gospels, 
and to each reader, apart, if serious and ingenuous, and 
yet incredulous, the Saviour of the world addresses 
a mild reproof — It is I. — Behold my hands and 
my feet : — Reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into 
my side, and be not faithless but believing.'* And 
can we do otherwise than grant, all that is now 
demanded— namely, That the Evangelists record the 
actions and discourses of a real person ? 

It is well to consider the extraordinary contrasts 
that are yet perfectly harmonized in the personal 
character of Christ. 

At a first glance, he appears always in his own 
garb of humility ; — lowliness of demeanour is his very 
characteristic. But we must not forget that this low- 
liness was combined with nothing less than a solemnly 
proclaimed, and peremptory challenge of rightful 
headship over the human race ! Nevertheless the 
oneness of the character — the fair perfection of the 
surface, suffers no rent by this blending of elements 
so strangely diverse. Let us then bring before the 
mind, with all the distinctness we can, the conception 
of the Teacher, more meek than any who has ever 
assumed to rule the opinions of mankind, and who 
yet, in the tones proper to tranquil modesty, and 
as conscious at once of power and right, anticipates 
that day of wonder, when, " the King shall sit 



CHRISTIANITY. 



21 



on the throne of his glory," with his angels attend- 
ant ; and when all nations shall be gathered before 
him," from his lips to receive their doom ! The 
more these elements of personal character are dis- 
proportionate, the more convincing is the proof of 
reality, which arises from their harmony. 

We may read the Evangelists listlessly, and not 
perceive this evidence ; but we can never read 
them intelligently without yielding to it our con- 
victions. 

If the character of Christ be, as indeed it is, alto- 
gether unmatched, in the circle of history, it is even 
less so by the singularity of the intellectual and moral 
elements which it combines, than by the sweetness 
and perfection which result from their union. This 
will appear the more, if we consider those instances 
in which the combination was altogether of an un- 
precedented kind. 

Nothing has been more constant in the history of 
the human mind, whenever the religious emotions 
have gained a supremacy over the sensual and sordid 
passions, than the breaking out of the ascetic temper 
in some of its forms ; and most often in that which 
disguises virtue, now as a spectre, now as a maniac, 
now as a mendicant, now as a slave, but never as the 
bright daughter of heaven. Of the three Jewish sects, 
extant in our Lord's time, two of them — that is to say 
the two that made pretensions to any sort of piety, 
had assumed the ascetic garb, in its two customary 
species — the philosophic (the Essenes) and the fana- 
tical (the Pharisees) ; and so strong and uniform is 



22 



ON SPIRITUAL 



this crabbed inclination, that Christianity itself, in 
violent contrariety to its spirit and its precepts, went 
off into the ascetic temper, within a century after the 
close of the apostolic age, or even earlier. 

Under this aspect then, let us for a moment con- 
sider the absolutely novel phenomenon of the Teacher 
of a far purer morality than the world had heretofore 
ever listened to ; yet himself affecting no singularities 
in his modes of living. The superioritj^ of the soul 
to the body, was the very purport of his doctrine ; 
and yet he did not waste the body by any austerities ! 
The duty of self-denial he perpetually enforced; and 
yet he practised no factitious mortifications ! This 
Teacher, not of abstinence but of virtue ; this Re- 
prover, not of enjoyment, but of vice, himself went in 
and out among the social amenities of ordinary life 
with so unsolicitous a freedom, as to give colour to 
the malice of hypocrisy, in pointing the finger at 
him, saying — Behold a gluttonous man, and a 
winebibber ; a friend (companion) of publicans and 
sinners !" Should we not then note this singular 
apposition and harmony of qualities — that he who 
was familiar with the festivities of heaven, did not 
any more disdain the poor solaces of mortality, than 
disregard its transient pains and woes ? Follow this 
same Jesus from the banquets of the opulent, where 
he showed no scruples in diet, to the highways and 
wildernesses of Judea, where, never indifferent to 
human sufferings, he healed — as many as came unto 
him." 

These remarkable features in the personal cha- 



CHRISTIANITY, 



23 



racter of Christ have often, and very properly been 
adduced, as instances of the unrivalled wisdom and 



wdse and good. Jpi 

It is not how^ever for this purpose that^^^now refer 
to them ; but rather as harmonies, altogether inimi- 
table, and which put beyond doubt the historic reality 
of the Perso :. Thus considered, they must be ad- 
mitted by calm minds as carrying the truth of Chris- 
tianity itself. 

There are however those who will readily grant 
us, what indeed they cannot, with any appearance of 
candour deny — the historic reality of the person of 
Christ, and the more-than-human excellence which 
his behaviour and discourses embody ; but at this 
point they declare that they must stop. Let such 
persons see to it : — they cannot stop at this point ; 
for just at this point there is no ground on which 
foot may stand. 

— What are the facts ? 

— The inimitable characteristics of nature attach to 
what we may call the common incidents of the evan- 
gelic history, and in which Jesus of Nazareth is 
seen mingling himself with the ordinary course of 
social life. But is it true that these characteristics 
suddenly, and in each instance, disappear when the 
same person is presented to us walking on another, 
and a high path — namely, that of supernatural power ? 
It is not so, and on the contrary, very many of the 
most peculiar and infallible of those touches of ten- 
derness and pathos which so generally mark the 



elevation, which mark him as preemi 




among the 



24 



ON SPIRITUAL 



evangelic narrative, belong precisely to the super- 
natural portions of it, and are inseparably connected 
with acts of miraculous beneficence. We ask that 
the Gospels be read w^ith the utmost severity of criti- 
cism, and with this especial object in view, namely — 
to inquire — Whether those indications of reality 
which have already been yielded to as irresistible 
evidences of truth, do not belong as fully to the 
supernatural, as they do to the ordinary incidents of 
the Gospels ? or in other words, whether, unless we 
resolve to overrule the question by a previous deter- 
mination, any ground of simply historic distinction 
presents itself, marking off the supernatural from the 
ordinary events of the evangelic narratives ? 

If we feel ourselves to be conversing with historic 
truth, as well as with heavenly wisdom, when Jesus 
is before us, seated on the mountain brow, and deli- 
vering the Beatitudes to his disciples ; is it so that 
the colours become confused, and the contour of the 
figures unreal, when the same personage, in the midst 
of thousands, seated by fifties on the grassy slope, 
supplies the hunger of the multitude by the word of 
his power ? Is it historic truth that is presented 
when the fearless Teacher of a just morality convictS\ 
the Rabbis of folly and perversity ; and less so when, 
turning from his envious opponents, he says to the 
paralytic — Take up thy bed and walk?" Nature 
herself is before us when the repentant woman, after 
washing the Lord's feet with her tears, and wiping 
them with her hair, sits contrasted with the obdurate 
and uncourteous Pharisee : — But the very same bright 



CHRISTIANITY. 



25 



forms of reality mark the scene when Jesus, filled 
with compassion at the sight of a mother's woe, 
stays the bier, and renders her son alive to her 
bosom. 

Or, if we turn to those portions of the Gospels in 
which the incidents are narrated more in detail, and 
where a greater variety of persons is introduced, and 
where therefore the supposition of fabrication is the 
more peremptorily excluded, it is found that the 
supernatural and the ordinary elements are in no way 
to be distinguished in respect of the simple vivacity 
with which both present themselves to the eye. The 
evangelic narrative offers the same bright translu- 
cency — the same serenity, and the same precision, in 
reporting the most astounding, as the most familiar 
occurrences. It is like a smooth -surfaced river 
which, in holding its course through a varied country, 
reflects from its bosom, at one moment the ame- 
nities of a homely border, and at the next the 
summits of the Alps, and both wath the same un- 
ruffled fidelity. 

As the subject of a rigorous historic criticism, and 
all hypothetical opinions being excluded, no pretext 
whatever presents itself for drawing a line around 
the supernatural portions of the Gospels, as if they 
were of suspicious aspect, and differed from the con- 
text in historic verisimilitude. Without violence 
done to the rules of criticism, we cannot detach the 
miraculous portions of the history, and then put 
together the mutilated portions, so as to consist with 
the undoubted reality of the part which is retained. 

c 



26 



ON SPIRITUAL 



Or take the narrative of the raising of Lazarus of 
Bethany. A brilliant vividness, as when a sunbeam 
breaks from between clouds, illumines this un- 
matched history ; — and it rests with equal intensity 
upon the stupendous miracle, and upon the beauty 
and grace of the scene of domestic sorrow. If we 
follow Martha and Mary from the house to the spot 
where they meet their friend, and give a half-utter- 
ance to their confidence in his power; at what step- — 
let us distinctly determine — at what step, as the group 
proceeds towards the sepulchre, shall we halt and 
refuse to accompany it ? Where is the break in the 
story, or the point of transition; and where does history 
finish, and the spurious portion commence ? Is it 
when we approach the cave's mouth that the gestures 
of the persons become unreal, and the language un- 
true to nature ? Where is it that the indications of 
tenderness and majesty disappear ? — at the moment 
when Jesus weeps ; or when he invokes his Father ; 
or when, with a voice which echoes in Hades, he 
challenges the dead to come forth ; or is it when 

he who was dead," obeys this bidding ? 

We affirm that, on no principles which a sound 
mind can approve, is it possible^ either to deny the 
reality of the natural portions of this narrative, or to 
sever these from the supernatural. But this is not 
enough ; for it might be in fact more easy to offer some 
intelligible solution of the difficulty attaching to the 
supposition that the Gospels are not true, in respect 
of the ordinary, than of the extraordinary portion of 
their materials. If we were to allow it to be possible 



CHRISTIANITY. 



27 



(which it is not) that writers showing so little inven- 
tive or plastic power, as do Matthew the Publican, 
and John of Galilee, should, with the harmony of 
truth, have carried their imaginary Master through 
the common acts and incidents of his course; never 
could they, no, nor waiters the most accomplished, 
have brought him, in modest simplicity, through the 
miraculous acts of that course. Desperate must be 
the endeavour to show that, v/hile the ordinary events 
of the Gospel must be admitted as true, the extra- 
ordinary are incredible. On the contrary, it would 
be to the former, if to any, that a suspicion might 
attach ; — for, as to the latter, they cannot but be 
true : if not true, whence are they ? 

The scepticism, equally condemned as it is by 
historical logic and by the moral sense, which allows 
the natural, and disallows the supernatural portion 
of the history of Christ, is absolutely excluded when 
we compare, in the four Gospels, separately, the 
narrative of what precedes the resurrection, with 
the closing portions, which bring the crucified Jesus 
again among his disciples. 

If those portions of the evangelic history which 
reach to the moment of the death of Christ, are, in a 
critical sense, of the same historic quality as those 
which run on to the moment of his ascension, and if 
the farmer absolutely command our assent — if they 
carry it as by force, then, by a most direct inference, 
" is Christ risen indeed," and become the first fruits 
of immortality to the human race. Then is it true 
that, as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be 



28 



ON SPIRITUAL 



made alive." No narrative is anyv^here extant 
comparable to that of the days and hours imme- 
diately preceding the crucifixion ; and the several 
accounts of the hurried events of those days present 
the minute discordancies which are always found 
to belong to genuine memoirs, compiled by eye- 
witnesses* 

The last supper and its sublime discourses; the 
agony in the garden, the behaviour of the traitor, 
the scenes in the hall of the chief priest, and before 
the judgment seat of the Roman procurator — and in 
the Palace of Herod, and in the place called the Pave- 
ment, and on the way from the city ; — and the scene 
on Calvary, are true — if anything in the compass of 
history be true. 

But now- — if our moral perceptions are, in this way, 
to be listened to, not less incontestably real are the 
closing chapters of the four Gospels, in which we find 
the same sobriety and the same vivacity ; the same 
distinctness, and the same freshness ; the same pathos, 
and the same wisdom, and the same majesty ; and 
yet all chastened by the recollected sorrows of a 
terrible conflict just passed, and mellowed with the 
glow of a triumph at hand. 

Let it be imagined that writers such as the evange- 
lists, might have led their master as far as to Calvary; 
but could they, unless truth had been before them, 
have reproduced him from the sepulchre? What 
abruptness, harshness, extravagance^ what want of 
harmony, would have been presented in the closing 
chapters of the Gospels, if the same Jesus had not 



CHRISTIANITY. 



29 



supplied the writers with their materials, by going in 
and out among them after his resurrection ! 

On the supposition that Christ did not rise from 
the dead, let any one whose moral tastes are not 
entirely blunted, read the narrative of his encounter 
with Mary in the garden, and with his disciples in 
the inner chamber, and again on the shore of the 
Lake ; let him study the perfect simplicity and yet 
the warmth of the interview with the two disciples 
on their way to Emmaus. The better taste of 
modern times, and the just sense of what is true 
in sentiment, and pure in composition, give us an 
advantage in an analysis of this sort. Guided, then, 
by the instincts of the most severe taste, let us 
spread before us the final portion of the Gospel of 
Luke ; — namely, the twenty-fourth chapter, which 
reports a selection of the events occurring between 
the early morning of the first day of the week, and 
that moment of wonder when, starting from the 
world he had ransomed, the Saviour returned w^hence 
he had come. Will any one who is acquainted with 
antiquity affirm that any writer, Greek, Roman, or 
Barbarian, has come down to us, whom we can be- 
lieve capable of conceiving at all of such a style of 
incident or discourse ; or who, had he conceived it, 
could have conveyed his conception in a style so 
chaste, natural, calm, lucid, pure ? Nothing like 
this narrative is contained in all the circle of fiction, 
and nothing equal to it in all the circle of history; 
and yet nothing is more perfectly consonant with the 
harmonies of nature. We may listlessly peruse this 



30 



ON SPIRITUAL 



page, each line of which wakens a sympathy in every 
bosom which itself responds to trath. But if we 
ponder it — if we allow the mind to grasp the several 
objects, we are vanquished by the conviction that all 
is real. — But if real, and if Christ be risen indeed, 
then is Christianity indeed a religion of facts ; 
and then are we fully entitled to a bold affirmation, 
and urgent use of whatever inferences may thence 
be fairly deduced. 

Acute minds will not be slow to discern, as in 
perspective before them, the train of those inferences 
which we shall feel ourselves at liberty to deduce from 
the admission that Christianity is historically true. 
This admission cannot, we are sure, be withheld ; 
and yet let it not be made with a reserved intention 
to evade the consequences. What are they ? — They 
are such as embrace the personal well-being of every 
one ; for, if Christianity be a history, it is a history 
still in full progress; i'c is a history running on, far 
beyond the dim horizon of human hopes and fears. 

But it is said, all this, at the hest, is moral evidence 
only ; and those who ai'e conversant with mathemati- 
cal demonstrations, and with the rigorous methods of 
physical science, must not be required to yield their 
convictions easily to mere moral evidence. 

We ask, have those who are accustomed thus to 
speak, actually considered the import of their objec- 
tion ; or inquired what are the consequences it in- 
volves, if valid? We believe not; and we think so, 
because the very terms are destitute of logical mean- 



CHRISTIANITY. 



31 



ing ; or imply, if a meaning be assigned to them, a 
palpable absurdity. 

If, for a moment, we grant an intelligible meaning 
to the objection as stated, and consent to understand 
the terms in which it is conveyed, as they are often 
used, then we affirm — That some portion of even 
the abstract sciences is less certain than are very 
many things established by what is called moral 
evidence — That a large amount of what is accredited 
as probably true within the circle of the physical and 
mixed sciences is immeasurably inferior in certainty 
to much which rests upon moral evidence : — and 
further — That so far from its being reasonable to 
reject this species of evidence, the mere circumstance 
of a man's being known to distrust it in the conduct 
of his daily affairs, would be held to justify, in his 
case, a commission of lunacy. 

No supposition can be more inaccurate than that 
which assumes the three kinds of proof, mathematical, 
physical, and moral, to range, one beneath the other, 
in a regular gradation of certainty ; — as if the mathe- 
matical were in all cases absolute ; the physical a 
degree lower, or, as to its results, in some degree, and 
always, less certain than those of the first ; and by 
consequence the third, being inferior to the second, 
necessarily far inferior to the first ; and therefore, 
always much less certain than that which alone de- 
serves to be spoken of as certain ; and in fact barely 
trustworthy in any case. 

Any such d'stribution of the kinds of proof is mere 
confusion ; illogical abstractedly, and involving con- 



32 



ON SPIRITUAL 



sequences, which, if acted upon, would appear ridicu- 
lously absurd. 

It is indeed true, that the three great classes of 
facts — the universal, or absolute — (mathematical and 
metaphysical) — the general or physical — and the in- 
dividual (forensic and historical) are pursued and 
ascertained by three corresponding methods — or, as 
they might be called — three logics. But it is far from 
being true that the three species of reasoning hold 
an exclusive authority, or sole jurisdiction, over the 
three classes of facts above mentioned. Throughout 
the physical sciences^ the mathematical logic is per- 
petually resorted to ; while, even within the range of 
the mathematical, the physical is, once and again, 
brought in as an aid. But if we turn to the historical 
and forensic department of facts, the three methods 
are so blended in the establishment of them, that, 
to separate them altogether is impracticable ; and as 
to moral evidence, if we use the phrase in any in- 
telligible sense, it does but give its aid, at times, 
on this ground; and even then the conclusions to 
which it leads rest upon inductions which are physical, 
rather than moral. 

The conduct of a complicated historical, or forensic 
argument concerning individual facts, resembles the 
manipulations of an adroit workman, who, having 
some nice operation in progress, lays down one tool> 
and snatches up another, and then another, according 
to the momentary exigencies of his task. 

That sort of evidence may properly be called moral, 
which appeals to the moral sense, and in assenting to 



CHRISTIANITY, 



33 



which, as we often do with an irresistible conviction, 
we are unable, with any precision, to convey to another 
mind the grounds of our firm belief. It is thus, 
often, that we estimate the veracity of a witness, or 
judge of the reality or spuriousness of a written nar- 
rative. But then even this sort of evidence, when 
nicely analyzed, resolves itself into physical princi- 
ples. What are these convictions, which we find it 
impossible to clothe in words, but the results, in our 
minds, of slow, involuntary inductions concerning 
moral qualities, and which, inasmuch as they are 
peculiarly exact, are not to be transfused into a 
medium so vague and faulty as is language, at the 
best. 

As to the mass of history, by far the larger por- 
tion of it rests, in no proper sense, upon moral 
evidence. To a portion the mathematical doctrine 
of probabilities applies ; — for it may be as a million 
to one, that an alleged fact, under all the circum- 
stances, is true. But the proof of the larger portion 
resolves itself into our knowledge of the laws of the 
material world, and of those of the world of mind. 
A portion also is conclusively established by a minute 
scrutiny of its agreement with that intricate combina- 
tion of small events which makes up the course of 
human afiairs. 

Every real transaction, especially those which flow 
on through a course of time, touches this web-work 
of small events at many points, and is woven into 
its very substance. Fiction may indeed paint its 
personages so as for a moment to deceive the eye ; 

c 3 



34 



ON SPIRITUAL 



— but it has never succeeded in the attempt to 
foist its factitious embroideries upon the tapestry of 
truth. 

We might take as an instance^ that irresistible 
book in which Paley has established the truth of the 
personal history of Su Paul.'^' is throughout a 
tracing of the thousand fibres by which a long series 
of events connects itself with the warp and woof of 
human affairs. To apply to evidence of this sort, 
the besom of scepticism, and sweepingly to remove it 
as consisting only in moral evidence, is an amazing 
instance of confusion of mind. 

It is often loosely affirmed that history rests mainly 
upon moral evidence. Is then a roman camp moral 
evidence ? Or is a roman road moral evidence ? Or are 
these and many other facts, when appealed to as proof 
of the assertion that, in a remote age, the Romans 
held military occupation of Britain, moral evidence ? 
If they be, then we affirm that, when complete in its 
kind, it falls not a whit behind mathematical de- 
mons tration, as to its certainty. f 

Although it is not true that Christianity rests 
mainly upon moral evidence, yet it is true, that it 
might rest on that ground with perfect security. 

It is to this species of evidence that we have now 
appealed ; not as establishing the heavenly origin of 
Christianity — which it does establish ; but simply as 
it attests the historic reality of the person of Christ. 

* The " Horse Paulinse." 

f Some instances, intended to place this important point in a clear 
light, will be found iii a note appended to the Lectures. 



CHRISTIANITY. 



35 



And here we inust ask an ingenuous confession from 
whoever may be bound i7i foro conscientice to give it, 
that the notion of Ch-'nsLianily, and ihe habitual feel- 
ings toward \ 'i of many in this Christian country, are 
such as if^ brought to the test of severe reasoning, 
could by ro ingenuity be made to consist, either with 
the supposition that Christianity is historically false; 
or that it is historically true ! This ambiguous faith 
of the cultured, less reasonable than the superstitions 
of the vulgar (for they are consistent, which this is 
not) could never hold a place in a disciplined mind 
but by an act, repeated from day to day, and similar to 
that of a man who should refuse to have the shutters 
removed from the windows on that side of his house 
whence he might descry the residence of his enemy. 

If ChrisLiarity be historically true, it must be 
granted to demand m.ore than a respectful acknow- 
ledgment that its system of ethics is pure ; or, were 
it historically false, we ought to think ourselves to be 
outraging at once virtue and reason in allowing its 
name to pass our lips. While bowing to Christianity 
as good, and useful ; and yet not invested with autho- 
rity toward ourselves, we are entangled in a web of 
inconsistencies, of which we are not conscious, only 
because we choose to make no effort to break through 
it. If Christianity be true, then is it true that — 
We must aU appear before the judgment-seat of 
Christ;" and must, " every one of us, give an account 
of himself to God." What meaning do such words 
convey to the minds of those who, with an equal 
alarm, would see Christianity overthrown as a con- 



36 



ON SPIRITUAL 



trolling power in the social system ; or find it 
brought honne to themselves, as an authority they 
must personally bow to ? Christians ! how many 
amongst us are Christians, as men might be called 
philosophers, who, while naming Newton always 
with admiration, should yet reserve their interior 
assent for the very paganism of astronomy. 

A religion of facts, we need hardly observe, is the 
only sort of religion adapted powerfully to affect the 
hearts of the mass of mankind ; for ordinary or un- 
cultured minds can neither grasp, nor will care for, 
abstractions of any kind. But then that which 
makes Christianity proper for the many, and indeed 
proper for all, if motives are to be effectively swayed, 
renders it a rock of offence to the few who will admit 
nothing that may not be reduced within the circle of 
their favoured generalizations. Such minds, there- 
fore, reject Christianity, or hold it in abeyance, 
not because they can disprove it, but because it will 
not be generalized, because it will not be sublimated, 
because it will not be touched by the tool of reason : 
because it must remain what it is — an insoluble mass 
of Facts. In attempting to urge consistency upon such 
persons, the advocate of Christianity makes no pro- 
gress, and has to return, ever and again, to his docu- 
ment, and to ask — Is this true, or false ? if true, your 
metaphysics may be true also ; but yet must not give 
law to your opinions ; much less govern your conduct. 

Resolute as may be the determination of some to 
yield to no such control, nevertheless, if the evangelic 
history be true, one is our Master, even Christ — 



CHRISTIANITY. 



37 



He is our Master in abstract speculation — our Master 
in religious belief — our Master in morals, and in the 
ordering of every day's affairs. 

It will readily be admitted that this our first 
position, if it be firm, sweeps away, at a stroke, a 
hundred systems of religion, ancient and modern, 
which either have not professed to rest upon historic 
truth, or which have notoriously failed in making 
good any such pretension. These various schemes 
need not be named ; — they barely merit an enu- 
meration : — they are susceptible of no distinct refu- 
tation ; for they are baseless, powerless, obsolete. 

Say you that Christianity is intolerant in thus 
excluding all other systems ? But must it not be 
exclusive of every other, if it he true ? Let us have 
a religion, willing to walk abreast with other religions 
— religions affirming what it denies, and denying 
what it affirms, when we admit mathematical or phy- 
sical sciences, equally indulgent toward what must be 
purely absurd, if themselves are not so ! Yet an 
exclusive religion is not therefore an intolerant one. 
An intolerant religion, is the religion of a sect — and 
of a sect in fear. 

11. 

Our second proposition, claiming assent, if the first 
be admitted, is. 

That Christianity is a religion of facts with 
which all men, without exception and without 
distinction, and in an equal degree, are per- 
sonally concerned. 



38 



ON SPIKITUAL 



The very opposite characteristic has attached to 
every scheme of natural religion, as well as to every 
corruption of ChristianiLy, from the first century 
onward ; and it is to be especially noted that, just in 
proportion as such sysi^ems, whether pagan or nomi- 
nally Christian, have worn an aspect of elevation, and 
have been fraught with moral energy, or a power to 
control the passions, they have, with so much the 
more arrogance, insisted upon, or tacitly assumed the 
rule of spiritual casbe; and have laboured to effect a 
distribation of men in to classes — patrician or plebeian ; 
— spiritual, or natural, by the destination of nature. 

But Christianily is therefore a Spiritual religion^ 
and it moves the human heart from its depths, and 
confers a substantial dignity upon man, because it 
attaches a sovereign importance to those elements of 
our moral constitution in respect of which the natural 
or the artificial distinctions that subsist between man 
and man, be they what they may, must always seem 
trivial. Christianity addresses men, only or chiefly 
as they stand related to God ; and in the presence of 
the Infinite, of what account are the diiTerences of the 
finite ? 

This characteristic of Christianity — that it pro- 
pounds truth to all, and demands to be considered, 
examined and accepted by men individaally, is more 
peculiar than we, in modern times, can easily imagine; 
for this great principle, given to the world by the 
Gospel, has now so d'lTased itself through the atmo- 
sphere of the world of mind, that we breathe it 
unconsciously. But never, until it was proclaimed 



CHRISTIANITY. 



39 



by the Apostles, had it been surmised, either by- 
Greek or Jew, that Trulh, sacred Truth, the brightest 
daughter of the skies, might be vulgarized, and offered 
to the acceptance of the mass of mankind. 

In the ancient world, Truth, w^hether theological 
or physical, was, like the costly perfumes of the East, 
an exquisite luxury, which should be found only 
within marble palaces. But in the modern world, and 
this vast change is attributable mainly to the spread 
of Christianity, truth has becom.e, like the very breezes 
of heaven, common proper tj^, and is everywhere sweet, 
salutary, free ; and enjoyed with equal zest in the 
cottage and the palace. 

By no means so strange to the ear of the ancient 
world was the doctrine of the future life, and of the 
resurrection of the body, as was this doctrine. That 
Truth is every man's concern m. en t, every man's right, 
and every man's most necessary possession. The 
apostolic voice, sounding throughout the ancient 
world, and calling upon *^ aU men everywhere to 
repent, and to believe the Gospel," besides its direct 
religious import, carried an inevitable, though latent 
inference, which has effected the greatest of aU the 
revolutions that have marked the intellectual con- 
dition of mankind. This challenge to repent and to 
believe^ awakened in every bosom a sense of responsi- 
bility, altogether new ; — putting as it did every human 
being in a position of direct relationship to God — the 
Judge of all ; and fixing in the minds of all a deep 
conviction that the difference between truth and error, 
is of infinite consequence to men, individually. 



40 



ON SPIKITUAL 



The promulgation of this Christian principle gave 
a death-blow, on the one hand, to despotism, both 
spiritual and civil ; and on the other to sophistry, 
whether philosophic or religious. For if every man 
be obliged, as he will answer it to God, to possess 
himself of truth, he must be free ;— free — not only 
to think, but to speak ; — free to move ; — free to go in 
quest of truth ; — free to bring it home ; — free to 
confer with his fellows concerning it ; and free to 
impart what he has acquired. 

Again ; if truth be for all, and if it be indispen- 
sable to each, it must break itself away from the 
erudite frivolities of schools ; and will soon come to 
be discussed among those who neither could use, nor 
would endure, the astute methods of a factitious 
logic. 

It is well known how early, and with what dili- 
gence, and with what variety of devices, those who 
had usurped the direction of the human mind, la- 
boured to put out this candle, and to deny truth 
to all men. These endeavours actually triumphed. 
First, the pernicious " discipline of the secret," then 
christianized Gnosticism, then Asceticism-, then 
Hierarchical ambition, sealed the Gospel, in their 
turns ; or, we might say, clothed the Sun in sack- 
cloth.* 

The Lutheran reformation broke in upon this 
mystery of pride, making a new proclamation of the 
apostolic doctrine, that the Gospel, as a system of 

* Some illustrations of these several affirmations will be found in a 
Suj^plemental Note. 



CHRISTIANITY. 41 

momentous facts, is addressed to man as man, and that 
it concerns all men, without distinction. Whatever 
incidental disorders may have attended the new pro- 
mulgation of this animating principle, itself is not 
chargeable with any such irregularities ; for to affirm 
that every man should take heed that he knows what 
is essential to his salvation, surely implies no dispa- 
ragement of the legitimate means of conveying truth 
from those who know more, to those who know less. 
On this ground, our choice is not between peace and 
ignorance, on the one side ; and knowledge and 
license on the other ; but between the disorders of 
ignorance — tending always toward anarchy ; and the 
disorders of knowledge, tending always toward a 
more settled adjustment of elements. 

It is evident that, if two religious systems be 
compared, of which the one addresses itself to a few, 
on the ground of certain natural advantages, or of 
some artificial prerogative ; while the other addresses 
all, on ground common to all ; the latter must bear, 
with the greater stress, upon the conscience, because 
it descends deeper into human nature, and has to do 
with motives of a wider grasp. Christianity is, for 
this very reason, a spiritual religion — that is to say, 
it is a power touching every principle of our nature, 
and working from the very depths of our hearts, 
because it heeds no distinctions among those who 
are heirs in common of immortality, are amenable in 
common to eternal justice, and are redeemed, one 
and all, by the precious blood of the same Saviour. 

Within the Christian system, if a few do, in fact. 



42 



ON SPIRITUAL 



reach an eminence not attained by the many, it is 
only by allowing a fuller operation to motives which 
all might properly admit in the very same degree. 

" Go ye into all the world," said the Lord, to his 
ministers — Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the Gospel to every creature." Now, the highest 
conception we can form of Spiritual Christianity, as 
embodied in the habits, motives, and conduct of men, 
embraces absolutely nothing beyond what must come 
to be the ordinary feeding of Christians, when this 
commission shall have been completed, and when, to 
" Christ, every knee shall have bowed, every tongue 
have made confession ! " Nor indeed should it be 
thought possible, that a religion destined to be uni- 
versal^ can exhibit the harmony of its energies in any 
single instance, until ii: has become so : — ids abroad 
that the power of the summer sun is felt ; rot in the 
pencils of light that enter a darkened chamber. 

We have professed that we shall ask nothing on 
behalt of spiritual religion which does not necessarily 
flow from the admission, that Christianity is histo- 
rically true ; but if true, then the commission which 
we have cited to preach the Gospel to every creature, 
is not merely a command to promulgate saving truth, 
but an implicit command also, addressed to every 
creature, to receive it. And let it be considered that 
the fact of coming within the range of this proclama- 
tion can be regarded as an indifferent circumstance, 
only on the supposition that the proclamation itself 
has not issued from a Sovereign Power. What may 
be the future destiny of the millions of the human 



CHRISTIANITY. 



43 



family upon whose ear this sound has never fallen, it 
were worse than idle to conjectare. Be it what it 
may, it must differ, in a forensic sense, from that of 
those who have heard it. An instantaneous change 
in a man's forensic position, or in his personal rela- 
tionship to government, is a ciicumstance not unusual 
in civil affairs ; and more than a few passages of the 
New Testament support the inference that it holds in 
the administration of heaven, and that the mere fact 
of having been formally challenged by heaven to 
repentj draws with it consequences as endless as 
immortality. 

III. 

We thus reach our Third Proposition, which is 
this. That Christianity, as a religion of facts, 

INDUCES A NEW RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MAN AND 

HIS Maker. 

A virdicdve power, sure of its purpose, gives no 
notice of its approach. EuL if an absolute Sovereign 
encounters the guiUy on his path, before the day of 
trial, and challenges his submission, a purpose of 
grace may fairly be inferred from such an act of con- 
descension. This condescension however toward the 
guilty, does not leave him on the ground he previ- 
ously occupied ; for disobed'ence thenceforward takes 
the character of contumacy ; and conlmued resistance 
may then be construed as treason. The Gospel, even 
rejected, has therefore induced a new and a permanent 
relationship between man and his Creator. 

But how new and intimate is that relationship 



44 



ON SPIRITUAL 



which it induces when the offered reconciliation is 
accepted ! 

It may be well to measure the vastness of the 
interval which has been passed over, when such a 
relationship commences. 

Among the many instances in which truth has 
been, as we might say, furtively obtained from Chris- 
tianity, and made to grace systems not entitled to 
the credit they confer, is this of the paternal relation- 
ship assumed to exist between man and his Creator. 

On the ground of natural, or as we should say. 
Abstract Theology, the bold assumption of this rela- 
tionship can by no means be made good, in a satis- 
factory manner ; unless indeed we assign a very vague 
sense to the phrase, and intend nothing more by it 
than a wide benevolence, altogether regardless of 
individual welfare ; and which is to be traced no 
further than appears in the beneficent operation of 
general laws. But surely the paternal relationship 
involves much more than this ! 

And let it be considered how vapid and cold, at 
the very best, are any sentiments of devotion which 
rest strictly on the ground of abstract theology. 
Grant it, that the human mind, and especially as 
aided by the discoveries of modern science, does 
hold a sort of communion with the Infinite Mind. 
— Man, with the mechanical aids of modern science 
in his hand, stands on his turret of observation, mid- 
way in the field of the universe — an intelligent 
spectator of the movements of infinite wisdom and 
power; for it is true that the procedures of the 



CHRISTIANITY. 



45 



infinite mind, are, to the finite mind, of an intelligible 
quality. Fitness, that is to say, the adaptation of 
means to an end, is the ground of this intellectual 
correspondence between man and the Creator of the 
world. Yet this correspondence does not merit to 
be designated as a communion ; for it has no return. 
We gaze with delight upon the wonders of the uni- 
verse ; and once and again, perhaps, admiration bursts 
aloud from our lips. — We hail the Parent of all : — 
we invoke the ever-present Power, and we offer 
him our homage. But the feeble sounds of praise 
are lost in the vault of heaven ! there is none to 
answer us; there is none to accept the language 
of our hearts ! Mind indeed is before us ; and an 
infinite energy of intelligence is in movement in our 
view ; but then this Energy works its work, heeding 
us not. It is seen upholding systems incalculably 
remote ; and again it takes its circuit near to the very 
ground on which we stand ; and we trace, with our 
microscope, the infinite Power, at work in the herbage 
beneath our feet. But toward us this Power — this 
Intelligence — this Goodness, is ever silent. Although, 
by abstract reasoning, we may have convinced ourselves 
that the creative power must be at every moment, 
and everywhere in operation, yet, so far as appears, 
or if we consult only our instinctive impressions, we 
might believe the vast frame-work of nature to be the 
forgotten product of a Power which long ago had 
taken its departure from its finished mechanism, and 
which will never return; and is now occupied on 
some field of exercise immensely remote ! 



46 



ON SPIRITUAL 



A mournful sense of the want of reciprocity belongs 
to those emotions with which, when untaught by 
revelation, Man contemplates the order and beauty of 
the universe. Nor is this the whole of our dis- 
advantage, in a religious view ; for, eager and ratio- 
cinative as is the human mind, it cannot but happen 
that, in our contemplations of nature, considered as 
the work of the Creator, the premises should engage 
more attention than the conclusion. And it is more 
and more so, in proportion as science becomes less 
theoretic and more exact ; less a matter of sentiment, 
and more of calculation ; less a delight of our leisure, 
and more the arduous occupation of our lives. What, 
in fact, is the theology of natural philosophy, but a 
formal inference, which courtesy demands to be 
noted on the closing page of a treatise, and which we 
have postponed to that page, lest it should interrupt, 
even for a moment, the eager course of our inquiries? 

In the hope of getting near to the Deity, on some 
other path than that, either of philosophy, or of the 
Christian revelation, the Mystic, patiently enduring 
the hunger and thirst of the soul for divine refresh- 
ments, goes on a pilgrimage over a sandy desert in 
search of the temple of God, which he supposes 
somewhere to be discoverable on earth ; but which he 
never finds. Mysticism, without the animation of 
philosophy, and barren of its rational inferences, 
gathers no vital warmth in its endless circuits of 
meditation ; nor can it, any more than philosophy, 
pretend to enjoy an affectionate communion with the 
Infinite Mind. The mystic sits in silent expectation, 



CHRISTIANITY. 



47 



from day to day, from year to year, upon the steps of 
the royal palace ; but never yet has he exchanged a 
smile of recognition with the Sovereign. 

How different is that commuT^ion of the heart with 
God which Christianity opens before us ! The Chris- 
tian, looking on the right to philosophy, on the left 
to mysticism ; — looking on all sides in search of any 
who may compete with him, says, with a cordial 
animation, Truly our communion is with the 
Father." 

Either we ourselves must have very cold parental 
feelings, or we allow ourselves a very improper applica- 
tion of the word — Father, to the supreme benevolence, 
when what we actually intend by it is nothing more 
than that comprehensive goodness from which all 
creatures, in their several ranks, draw their supplies ; 
and which is equally rich in its bounty toward the 
conscious, and the unconscious, toward the grateful, 
and the ungrateful ; toward the pious, and toward 
the wicked. 

What then is — paternal love ? It is not the simple 
benevolence of a superior toward the dependent beings 
who may sit at the same board. No, a Father's love 
is a fondness for the persons individually , and seve- 
rally, of his family : it is peculiar, it is indestructible, 
it is not diminished toward each, in being shared by 
many ; it is whole and entire for each. It is a con- 
centrated desire for the well-being of each singly ; — 
a desire carried forward through all the details of 
family nurture and provision. A Father's love grasps 
the object of its love, nor quits its hold ; nor consents 



48 



ON SPIRITUAL 



to substitute one object of fondness for another. Nor 
merely so ; for not content in securing the good of its 
object, it looks for, nor can dispense with, a warm 
return of the same personal fondness. Is a Father 
satisfied in providing a fortune for his children, and 
in sending them well abroad, just as a legal guardian 
might do ? A Father must have a reciprocity of love, 
or he is not happy. The heart of a Father yearns to 
receive, every day, the undoubted expressions of filial 
affection. 

Is then God our Father ? The Gospel declares it, 
as a fundamental truth ; and in opening up, by in- 
stances, the import of this declaration, it shows that 
this language of sacred affection is to be understood, 
not in a sense lowered and vague, as compared with 
that which it bears in its ordinary acceptation ; but 
in a sense of incalculably greater intensity and depth. 

Genuine piety commences at the moment when 
the love of our heavenly Father towards ourselves 
individually, as his children, is distinctly recognised. 
The earliest movements of the new life of the soul 
take this very character. As many as are led by 
the Spirit of God," they are taught that they are 

the sons of God," and find that they have not 
received ^Hhe spirit of bondage again, to fear;" but 
" the spirit of adoption," whereby they invoke God as 
their Father. The Spirit itself bearing witness 
with their spirits, that they are the children of 
God." 

It is this filial sentiment — the peculiarity of Christian 
piety, which brightens the enjoyments of life, even 



CHRISTIANITY. 



49 



the most common of them, with a sense that, in our 
obscure homes, we are sitting, from day to day, at 
the board which our heavenly Father has spread. It 
is this feeling which mitigates and sanctifies afflic- 
tion ; wherein, even when the sharpest, we discern 
a token of the truth that God is dealing with us as 
with sons," and is in fact preparing us for our home. 
It is this same affection — the distinct filial sentiment, 
which dispels the terrors of death ; while the Christian 
believes that the Father of spirits is removing a 
member of his family from a less to a more desirable 
abode. 

If Christian principles be thoroughly admitted, the 
Christian's home, even under these inclement skies, 
differs but in circumstance from the mansion pre- 
paring for him above. If a man love me," said 
Jesus to his disciples, " he will keep my words, and 
my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, 
and will make our abode with him." 

The intimate and affectionate relationship opened 
between the individual Christian and his heavenly 
Father finds its field of exercise in two principles 
very decisively pronounced in the inspired writings, 
as well of the Old as of the New Testament: — we 
mean the doctrine of a particular providence, and 
that of the proper efficacy of prayer, in relation to 
the ordinary events of life. It is easy to see in what 
manner a cordial belief of these principles tends to 
give vivacity and intensity to the religious affections; 
for it is thus that the very same world of cares, fears, 
hopes, which tends to obliterate the moral sentiments 

D 



50 



ON SPIRITUAL 



of other men, becomes, to the affectionate Christian, 
an efficacious discipline of faith and love. 

We have named as twOy the doctrines of a parti- 
cular providence, and of the efficacy of prayer, though 
in fact they are only two expressions of one great 
truth. Both are so explicitly taught in the Old and 
Nev/ Testament, and both are so amply confirmed by 
precept and example, and so much of w^hat is called 
Christian experience hinges upon both, that the 
truth of Christianity itself may seem to be staked 
upon the certainty of them; nor can it be doubted 
that, wdth many cultured minds, a factitious difficulty 
believed to be fatal to both, has had much influence 
in keeping alive a painful uncertainty, or a reserved 
scepticism, on the subject of religion. For if it be 
thought absolutely impossible to reconcile a belief in 
the efficacy of prayer, either v^ith the operation of 
general laws, or with the dogma of necessitj^, or 
even with the Christian doctrine of the divine fore- 
knowledge and predestination of events, how shall 
we believe Christianity itself to be true ? 

To hide from themselves the formidable front of 
this difficulty, some, with amazing inconsideration, 
and in violation of the clearest axioms of abstract 
science, have taken refuge in the supposition of a 
controlling providence in respect to great events, 
and none in respect of small ; as if mountains might 
be subject to one law of gravitation, and mole-hills to 
another ; or as if it were possible to make good any 
philosophical distinction between great events and 
small ; or as if a great event were any thing else than 



CHRISTIANITY. 



51 



a congeries of small events, regarded as one only in 
relation to certain consequences thence resulting ! 
Or some will persuade themselves — to such confusions 
of thought are we liable, that the divine provi- 
dence comes in, at times, to avert the consequences 
which must result from its own general laws, were 
they left to take their customary course ! What a 
conception is this of infinite wisdom as employed in 
the government of the world ! Should we think well 
of a mechanist who, in any such manner, should have 
to put his hand to his work ? 

On the other hand there are those v/ho, coolly re- 
garding the notion of a particular providence, and of 
the elBcacy of prayer, as illusions, or vulgar pre- 
judices, and yet finding it impossible to rid them- 
selves, as professed Christians, of the duty of prayer, 
resort to a supposition, equally vapid and prepos- 
terous. That the sole efficacy, or reason of prayer, 
turns upon its reflex, or secondary influence upon the 
mind of the worshipper, as an expression of the devout 
affections. As if reasonable men might be persuaded 
to continue, with sincere earnestness, any exercise 
w^hatever, which was well understood to be destitute 
of all direct utility ! A notion such as this resembles 
the supposition that we might continue to enjoy the 
accommodation of moonlight, even if the sun were 
blotted from the planetary system ! A reflective in- 
fluence may indeed be of very high importance ; 
but it must suppose ahvays the reality of a direct 
influence. 

In thus venturing to speak of the difficulties attaching 

D 2 



52 



ON SPIRITUAL 



to these doctrines as factitious^ we are not chargeable 
with the presumption of undertaking to make in- 
telligible the intricate movements of the moral uni- 
verse. It is not indeed given to man to penetrate 
these ; yet it is always within his power, and there- 
fore it is his duty, to dispel any confusion that may 
belong to his modes of thinking, by a stricter analysis 
of the notions over which he has a perfect command. 
We do not hesitate to affirm then, that, whatever 
seeming difficulty besets our Christian faith, on this 
ground, it is easily removable by the methods of 
analysis, as applied to abstract thought. 

To enter upon any such analysis, on the present 
occasion, were out of place. Nevertheless, on the 
ground of a careful consideration of the subject, we 
must profess to believe the doctrine of a particular 
providence, and of the proper efficacy of prayer 
— inseparabl}^ connected as they are with the fer- 
vour of Christian piety, to be liable to no solid 
objection. 

It is amid the vivid alternations of joy and sorrow, 
and under what may be called the homely disci- 
pline of the Christian's daily course, and as animated 
by the belief of the truths to which we have just 
alluded, that the devout affections are cherished, and 
are rendered at once keen and profound; while, by 
the very admixture of ingredients drawn from the 
passing interests of earth, extravagance is excluded, 
and a simple practical air is given to the religious 
life. 

It will not be forgotten that the intimate filial 



CHRISTIANITY. 



53 



relationship which the Christian scheme establishes 
between man and his Maker, results from, and is in- 
separably connected with the mediation of Christ. 
Being reconciled through him, we have access unto 
the Father and a fixed principle is it, rendered 
unalterable, at once by the Divine sanctity, and the 
polluted condition of man, that " no man cometh 
unto the Father" — none can claim the privileges of 
sonship, but " by the Son" — through his interces- 
sion, and as the consequence of his propitiatory 
death. 

This great truth, adverted to in this place, lest we 
should seem forgetful of what is so peculiarly a 
Christian doctrine, will demand to be considered more 
distinctly hereafter. At present we have to do with 
the fact merely, and to which w^e direct especial 
attention, constituting as it does one of the most 
marked of the visible characteristics of Christianity — 
and one which removes to a wide distance every 
other system of religion, whether claiming to be 
Christian, or not. 

It is remarkable that our Lord, while abstaining 
from a distinct enunciation of that scheme of redemp- 

4. 

tion which, before his death and resurrection, re- 
mained incomplete ; yet invariably, when addressing 
his sincere followers, encouraged them to look with 
affectionate confidence to ^' his Father, and their 
Father;" and when interpreting his own language, 
in this behalf, by apologues, he left them no room to 
doubt that they were to believe themselves indivi- 
dually the objects of the Divine care and love. 



54 



ON SPIRITUAL 



Previously therefore to any inquiry as to the Truths 
peculiar to Christianity, this intimate and affectionate 
relationship established between man and his Maker, 
as reconciled through Christ, presents itself to our 
notice, and should be regarded as a prominent feature 
of the Christian system. 

Will it be said that our Lord, or his Apostles, give 
encouragement, in any way, to an unhallowed fami- 
liarity in our approaches to God ; or that the reve- 
rence due to the Infinite Majesty is infringed by 
them ? Certainly not. The contrary is most evident. 
We see then that, according to the Idea of the 
Christian system, the deepest reverence is still com- 
patible with an affectionate and filial confidence, 
involving the belief that the individual Christian is 
the object of a paternal regard. 

On what scheme this adjustment of reverence and 
affection may be accomplished, is an after question. 
We now merely state the fact, and appeal to it as a 
most striking proof, at once of the spirituality, and 
of the benign tendency of the Gospel, and of its im- 
measurable superiority to every other religious system, 
whether contemplative or superstitious. 

Within the entire range of antiquity we meet with 
absolutely nothing that approaches this characteristic 
Christian feeling ; — except indeed what we find in the 
Old Testament, and especially the Psalms. And as to 
the several perversions of Christianity, from the first 
century to the present time, they stand condemned, 
one and all, by this very test ; if by no other. 

So far as such systems have leaned toward intel- 



CHRISTIANITY. 



55 



lectuality and abstraction, they have in the same degree 
excluded the warmth and simplicity of Christian piety. 
While such as have been marked by a tendency to 
superstition, have, as uniformly, and as completely, 
removed the worshipper to a distance, where dread 
and anxiety must prevail over every happier senti- 
ment. Or if, under any such systems, the fanatic 
has broken through these restraints, he has drawn 
near to the throne not with calm filial affection, but 
with the effrontery of an evil spirit. 

Let this one test be applied to that scheme of 
pietism which, in imitation of the style of antiquity, 
is at this moment, and Vv^ith so much diligence and 
success, propagated around us. This restored super- 
stition is in part poetic and imaginative ; — in part it is 
ritual and servile. That is to say — according to the 
constitution of minds, it is either a mild and pic- 
turesque enthusiasm, or a stern and severe fanaticism ; 
— both meeting within the same ritual forms, and 
worshipping beneath the same roof. 

Now, as to the first of these species of pietism, it 
is a principle of human nature, well understood, that 
the genuine workings of the heart are in no manner 
more effectively repressed and excluded than when 
they become transmuted into the illusive form of a 
poetic enthusiasm. What is general benevolence — 
what is friendship — what is filial love, when they 
slide off into romantic sentiment? — nothing better 
are they than shining exhalations — false and cold ! 
Attractive as may be this imaginative guise of piety, 
it is not the piety — it is not the filial love of the 



50 



ON SPIRITUAL 



Christian system ; and where the one is cherished the 
other disappears. 

As to the stern, or fanatical species of superstitious 
piety — that of the emaciated devotee, we need hardly 
say that, as well the theological notions whence it 
takes its rise, as the temper it generates, are equally 
incompatible with the principles and with the spirit 
of that life-giving piety which our Lord's discourses 
tend to cherish. 

IV. 

We have said — That Christianity is a religion not 
of notions, but of Facts : — That in these facts all men 
have the same, and the deepest concernment, and 
That a cordial admission of them as true, induces a 
new and intimate relationship between man and his 
Maker. We have then to assume our ultimate posi- 
tion, in thus considering the exterior characteristics 
of the Christian scheme ; and it is this — 

That the Facts of Christianity, when admit- 
ted AS TRUE, ARE OF A KIND TO EXCITE, AND TO 
MAINTAIN IN ACTIVITY, THE WARMEST AND THE 
MOST PROFOUND EMOTIONS OF WHICH MEN ARE 
SUSCEPTIBLE, ACCORDING TO THE INDIVIDUAL CON- 
STITUTION OF THEIR MINDS. 

A vastly higher amount of religious feeling than 
that which ordinarily entitles a man, by the world's 
courtesy, to the designation of an enthusiast, may 
yet be rigorously defended, as still falling short of 
what the nature of the case would justify. He is an 



CHRISTIANITY. 



57 



enthusiast, surely — not who feels strongly on an 
occasion which would justify feelings much more 
intense ; but he whose emotions, whether more or 
less acute, are spurious ; that is to say, are not of the 
quality which the occasion demands; and whose sen- 
timents want heart, truth, proportion. A man is no 
enthusiast who, with an intensity of mingled love and 
fear, rushes forward to rescue a wife and children 
from imminent peril. But we hold in contempt one 
who, at such a moment, should think to act the hero, 
and save his family with eclat. We blame him, not 
for feeling too much ; but for feeling too little ; and 
this is indeed always the fault of the enthusiast, and 
of the fanatic too ; and even w^hen his spurious pas- 
sions mount to the highest pitch. 

The wild extravagance of the enthusiast, or of the 
fanatic, and the torpor of the formalist, although to 
the eye they may range as extremes, are, in truth, only 
varieties of the same lethargy of the moral faculties. 
Let the enthusiast and the formalist be both awakened 
to a cordial belief of the facts of Christianity, and the 
difference between the two will almost disappear. 

But now, the objects of religious belief — the facts 
of Christianity, being in themselves of boundless 
range, and our personal concernment with them 
being of incalculable moment, whither, it may be 
asked, shall we be carried, if, with such impulses 
around us, we fully surrender ourselves to their influ- 
ence ? After all," says the objector, " is not Chris- 
tianity a religion of sobriety and reason ?" Assuredly 
it is so, and it is so because its seat is in the moral 

D 3 



58 



ON SPIRITUAL 



faculties, which are never profoundly moved, but when 
they are moved tranquilly. The characteristic of the 
affections is depth, not visible agitation. 

It is on this very ground that Christianity triumphs, 
as compared with every other religious system, ancient 
or modern, which has powerfully affected the human 
mind. These systems, so far as they have been 
powerful, at all, have been religions of agitation. 
Christianity, on the contrary, so far as it is effectual 
for its own purposes, is a religion of affection and 
habit, not of passionate commotion. Every powerful 
religion, Christianity excepted, has been either wild 
or sullen : and the same is true of every corruption 
of Christianity itself, in all the wdde circuit of delu- 
sions, commencing with the ascetic frenzy, and ending 
in the base superstition of the middle ages. If asce- 
ticism be tranquil, it is tranquil by apathy : if su- 
perstition be tranquil, it is tranquil by the constraint 
of dread ; but Christianity is at once tranquil and 
happy. If enthusiasm have its ecstasies, it is only 
joyous, so far as it is also unsound. 

The very characteristic of a genuine warmth of 
affection, is, that it is so calm, as to be liable to the 
control of reason. Unreasonable affection, or a 
doating fondness, is just so much the less constant 
and profound, as it is less under command. To feel 
intensely — to feel keenly — to feel with so sovereign 
a force of emotion, as may carry a man through 
any labours or sacrifices, for the sake of one beloved, 
is only another description of moral serenity. This 
even balance of the mind, means nothing less than 



CHRISTIANITY. 



59 



a balance of great forces. We are not used to speak 
of the equilibrium of a straw ; but we do speak of 
that of the engine-beam which vibrates silently, with 
a sort of omnipotence. 

Single out an instance of a heart susceptible, 
more than others, of a tender and self-renouncing 
affection. Does not that chosen heart — one of a 
thousand, float in the midst of a tranquil tempera- 
ment? Is not the beauty of an unrufiled surface 
its characteristic grace, and its very symbol ? What, 
in truth, is love, but the equipoise of the moral 
and intellectual faculties ? and the emotions are then 
the most intense, when every faculty, moral and 
intellectual, has found its place of rest around that 
centre. 

Christianity for this very reason, is a religion of 
sobriety, and a religion of self-control, because it is 
a religion of love, intense, and deep. 

" Why," it is often petulantly asked — ^' Why, if the 
issues of the present life are of infinite extent, why 
are we so much restricted in our knowledge of the 
future world ? Why is it only a vague report of the 
awful futurity that reaches the ear of man ? Why 
is not the curtain of the invisible world sometimes 
lifted ?" We do not undertake to furnish what might 
be the most direct reply to such a question; but 
we may, with confidence, give a reply, which we hold 
to be sufficient. 

If the present life be indeed a season of moral dis- 
cipline, and an exercise of those affections which are, 
in their nature, of a tranquil order, then undoubtedly 



60 ON SPIRITUAL 

must the mind be screened, during the season of this 
exercise, from the impulse of impressions which 
would at once overwhelm them. You say, Let me 
see the invisible ; lift the curtain of the grave." 
But would you risk the consequences of such a 
discovery, even as it might affect the physical 
structure of the mind? Certainly the discipline of 
the heart, after such a revelation, would not be what 
now it is. By the mere guidance of our moral senti- 
ments — our habitual emotions, we are to make 
our choice, on trying occasions, between virtue and 
vice ; but this choice would obey another and a very 
different law, if we had actually seen the one in its 
native condition — eternally wedded to happiness; 
and the other in the grasp of misery. 

If it be said, that the having heard a vague report 
of things future does not supply motives strong 
enough to fortify the frailty of human nature, exposed 
as it is to cruel temptations; we fully grant it: truly 
it is not a listless hearing of these things, or a vague 
belief of them, that will give effect to Christianity. 
What we have spoken of is a cordial belief of the 
Christian verities ; and such a belief is not to be 
expected to come in upon the mind unsought for, 
and undesired. 

Christianity professes to be a preparation for 
heaven. What then is heaven ? or what must we 
suppose to be the conditions of a permanent and 
ultimate felicity intended for beings constituted like 
ourselves, and moreover, far gone, as we are, from 
original righteousness ?" 



CHRISTIANITY. 



61 



In offering a reply to this question, we shall not 
advance a step on the ground of mere conjecture; 
but shall confine ourselves to that which lies clearly 
within the range of reasonable, nay, of inevitable 
anticipations. 

We ask then, first, are there to be sensitive plea- 
sures, in a future state — secondary enjoyments, 
analogous to the pleasures of sense in the present 
state? Let it for a moment be granted that there 
may be such ; yet it is certain that, if heaven be a 
world of progressive or upward-tending virtue, the 
bent of all minds must be toward enjoyments of a 
higher class than these : for a tendency downwards, 
or only an inert disposition to rest on the level of 
sensitive pleasure, can be nothing but sensuality, 
whether found on earth or in heaven. 

In heaven, that is, in a w^orld of permanent and 
progressive happiness, if there be at once higher 
and lower sources of enjoyment, the higher must 
always be held in chief esteem ; and there must be a 
tendency toward them in all w^ho themselves are to 
be permanently and progressively happy. 

But now, shall we further imagine heaven to draw 
a portion of its delights from the purer sources of 
intellectual occupation — the pleasures of reason, in 
the acquisition, and communication of knowledge ? 
If so, then sensitive pleasure must subside to a lower 
level ; for if not, the inferior would be chosen in the 
presence of what is confessedly better ; and such a 
choice is not merely unwise, but essentially vicious. 

Man however is formed for action, still more than 



62 



ON SPIRITUAL 



either for passive enjoyment, or for mere contempla- 
tion. He is so constituted that the sense of enjoy- 
ment arising from the exercise of the active faculties 
is of a far more vivid and commanding sort than even 
the choicest pleasures of intellect. Let but a high 
field of action be opened before human minds, and 
towards it will rush the majority ; if not all. Are 
great things doing ? the frivolous leave their amuse- 
ments — Elysian leisure is broken up; and even 
philosophers leave the stars to roll on while they 
come to take a part in, or to witness great actions. 
The supremacy of the active and moral faculties is 
attested by this tendency to forget and abandon every 
other kind of enjoyment, when great enterprises are 
in progress. 

And yet it is not action, merely ; but action, 
prompted by lofty motives, and tending toward vast 
results, affecting the well-being of multitudes, that 
sways the human mind, in a sovereign manner, and 
draws all toward one centre, as to a vortex. 

But now what idea have we been used to entertain 
of a future state ? If we exclude the terrific sup- 
position of a world of anarchy — the chaos of dis- 
cordant wills — if we think of heaven as a world of 
happiness, and therefore of absolute order, yet of 
high activity, it must be, not merely a sphere of vast 
movements, and of the development of motives deep 
and intense ; but of actions and movements openly 
and constantly controlled by the Supreme Wisdom 
and Goodness. Heaven — a happy futurity, and as 
contrasted with earth, must be thought of as God's 



CHRISTIANITY. 



63 



visible kingdom, or his direct administration of the 
intelligent universe. 

Heaven must be a sphere wherein whatever is 
good, and wise, and just is carried forward triumph- 
antly, and amid the joyful acclamations of all. And 
yet it must be a world in which the series of events, 
as they are portions of a succession which is infinite, 
may often fail to be intelligible to finite minds. 
What then follows ? — That a demand will as often be 
made upon the loyalty, and the devout submission of 
such minds. This is an inevitable supposition : the 
occupants of heaven, if they are to be constantly happy, 
must first have learned so to love God, under circum- 
stances of perplexity and trial, as may fit them to pass 
forward on the high road of duty, with reverent 
affection, and with unshaken constancy, whether or 
not the actual aspect of affairs may consist with their 
notions of sovereign goodness, and wisdom. It does 
not appear how we can exclude suppositions such as 
these from our anticipations of a happy futurity. 

Are we prepared to throw up the hope of immor- 
tality ? If not, and if we allow ourselves distinctly to 
forecast what must be its conditions, under the sway 
of the attributes of an Infinite Being, we are compelled 
to grant that beings, such as ourselves, and if undis- 
ciplined by Christianity, must have many lessons yet 
to learn before it is possible that we should take part 
in the felicity of heaven. We have to learn to be 
happy in the only manner in which happiness can be 
rendered permanent and progressive to intelligent 
and moral agents. But what is Christianity ? It is 



64 



ON SPIRITUAL 



the very schooling which we feel that we need in 
preparation for sharing in the only happiness possible 
to be enjoyed. 

If w^e look around, Christianity stands forward, by 
the open or implicit confession of all, as a heaven- 
ward tendency : — it is indeed the only movement on 
earth, setting toward a world of peace, justice, purity, 
and love. Or if, looking upward, we compel our- 
selves to rest upon the conception of a state of per- 
manent felicity — of holy energy, and affection, we 
must feel that we need that culture of the purest 
emotions which the Gospel, and it alone supplies. 

The Spiritual Christianity then, concerning which, 
as to its elements, we are yet more particularly to 
inquire, is nothing but Heaven's training of fallen 
man, for its own happiness. 

In concluding the present Lecture we invite a 
candid admission of the following affirmations — not 
one of which, singly, can, as we think, be denied, 
and which yet, in their connexion, embrace all that 
we mean to advance in behalf of Spiritual Chris- 
tianity. 

We assume as granted, the first principles of natural 
(or more properly) Abstract Theology, and the belief 
of a future life : we then say — That the happiness 
of a future life must consist in the activity of the 
benign emotions, as the impulses of a course of pro- 
gressive virtue and beneficence. 

That a true religion, considered as a preparation 
for future happiness, must possess this characteristic, 
that it is at once pure in its ethical principles, 



CHRISTIANITY. 



65 



and that it makes provision for the culture of the 
benign emotions, in a manner at once efficacious and 
happy. 

We then affirm, what must surely be conceded, 
that no positive religious system, now extant (and not 
Christian) can pretend to make any such provision 
for a future state of purity and felicity ; and more- 
over, that — 

No system of philosophical deism makes such a 
provision ; for even if its ethical principles were pure, 
yet, as it rests upon no ground of positive evidence, 
and can never be more than an opinion, it does but 
feebly affect even the few w^ho are the most favour- 
ably disposed to yield to such an influence — and does 
not at all affect the mass of mankind. In fact, no 
scheme of philosophical deism has ever exerted a 
powerful and salutary influence over the conduct 
of men. 

Christianity then has no rival, considered as a 
positive religion — claiming authority — pure in its 
ethical principles, and making a provision for the 
culture of the benign emotions as a preparation for 
the happiness of a future state. 

But further. — In looking to Christianity under the 
aspect now mentioned, we must exclude first, those 
systems called Christian, the obvious intention of 
which is to reduce it to as near a resemblance as 
possible to philosophical deism, by rejecting whatever 
is most peculiar to it : — and we do so, because Chris- 
tianity, when thus reduced, becomes as powerless and 
vapid as deism itself : — it ceases to be a positive or 



66 



ON SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY. 



authoritative system, and takes a place, quiescently, 
among mere schemes of opinion. 

On the other hand, v/e must exclude as not Chris- 
tian, although called so, those systems which, running 
in a direction opposite to the philosophic scheme, are 
of a servile character, and of abject tendency; and 
which, instead of giving an active and happy expan- 
sion to the affections, either benumb the moral faculties 
by dread and perplexity; or lull the conscience by 
formalities. 

In a word, we reject as unchristian, on the one 
side, Rationalism ; and on the other, Superstition. 

We then stand clear to advance the unrivalled 
claims of the Gospel as being — 

A positive and authoritative religion, resting upon 
Facts that are incontrovertible. 

A religion pure in its ethical principles. 

A religion which gives the fullest and happiest 
expansion to the benign emotions, by opening before 
us a ground of intimate, affectionate, and yet reve- 
rential communion with God. 

What those great Truths are on which this com- 
munion must rest, it will be our part, in the next 
Lecture, to inquire. 



THE 

SECOND LECTURE. 



ON THE TRUTHS PECULIAR TO 
CHRISTIANITY. 



SPIRITUAL 



THE SECOND LECTURE. 



Standing clear as we do of party entanglements^ 
and therefore free from the solicitudes of contro- 
versy ; we must not affect either to be ignorant of 
the now peculiar position of religious opinions, or 
indifferent as to the result of what may so well be 
called a crisis in the religious history of this 
country. 

We think it neither desirable, nor indeed possible, 
to treat the momentous subjects now before us, irre- 
spectively of the great controversy of the times. 
We must of necessity allude to this controversy, 
frequently ; nor can we profess a philosophic neu- 
trality in relation to questions on the determination 
of which, as we confidently believe, the religious, 
and, by consequence, the political and social well- 
being of this and other countries depends. 

Disclaiming therefore indifference or neutrality, we 
yet hope, in this and the following Lectures, to give 
evidence of a conscientious impartiality ; and so to 
speak as shall justify our profession of being the 
champions of no party. 



70 



ON SPIRITUAL 



We are then to speak of the Truths which are 
peculiar to Spiritual Christianity ; and therefore in 
regard, as well to brevity, as to controversial justice, 
we must not include any truths, important as they 
may be in themselves, which it shares in common, 
either with natural theology, or with what we are 
compelled to regard as a mutilated Christianity. 

Moreover, we must set off, from our enumeration, 
on this occasion, certain articles of belief, clearly 
attested indeed by Christ and his Apostles ; but 
w^hich are not properly elements of the Gospel. 
True indeed they may be, but they are more ancient 
than Christianity ; they would have been true had it 
never appeared ; and they must remain so, were it 
to be withdrawn. 

A due regard to the unsullied brightness of the 
Christian system demands this distinction to be made, 
and to be much regarded, between certain articles 
which it assumes to be true, but which are not of its 
substance. 

The advocates of Christianity, too often, as we 
think, have burthened themselves with the task of 
obviating difficulties connected with these extraneous 
articles of belief, which, so far as they may be sub- 
stantial, press, not upon the religion of the Bible, but 
rather upon the first principles of natural theology. 
It is certain that Christianity neither aggravates any 
burthen that had previously rested upon the lot of 
man ; nor imposes any new burthen. What the 
inspired writer says of the Divine Being himself, 
may be said of the word of his grace — It is light. 



CHRISTIANITY. 



71 



and in it is no darkness at all." So far as any such 
burthens admit of being either alleviated, or re- 
moved, the whole tendency of Christianity is to 
lessen their weight, or to exempt us altogether from 
their pressure. 

For example : — Our Lord and the Apostles appeal, 
with confidence, to those convictions of every human 
bosom which declare that man is liable to the Divine 
displeasure, and which give a foreboding of judg- 
ment to come. They reprove the sin and perversity 
of men with all boldness, on the ground of these 
admitted truths ; and they draw the prompt and 
necessary conclusion from the fact of that sad dege- 
neracy of human nature which is seen every where, 
is felt always, and is acknowledged, as often as pride 
is remanded, for a moment, by compunction or 
remorse. 

That man is indeed far gone from original 
righteousness," and that he neither loves God, nor 
desires the knowledge of him ; and that, abandoned 
to his own principles and resources, he is destitute, 
helpless, and without hope ; and that he is visibly 
tending toward an after state of still more open 
alienation from God — these melancholy truths, ante- 
rior to Christianity, are so assumed in the Christian 
system that there can be no liberty to call them in 
question by any who yield their faith to its authority. 
— They are, in fact, the very ground-work of that 
structure of mercy which is properly called — the 
Gospel : — nevertheless they are not of its substance. 

Our Lord affirms with distinctness that which, if 



72 



ON SPIRITUAL 



thoroughly helieved, must alarm our fears to the 
utmost. This affirmation is his; hut not the fact. 
The affirmation does but give an articulate form to 
that which may properly be called a universal fore- 
boding of the human family. If it be said that such 
dark anticipations rest upon no positive evidence ; yet, 
and prevalent as they are, they must be granted to 
possess a dim substantiality, upon w^hich our Lord's 
assertions thrown a steady light ; and we feel them to 
be real. 

Such is the belief, with all its appalling conse- 
quences, that the human race has fallen under the 
usurped sway of an invisible and malignant power — 
the ancient enemy of God — the outlaw of heaven, 
the author of error — first the seducer, and then the 
tormentor of his victims. 

A dark belief indeed is this ! but we gain very 
little by rejecting it, so long as the human family 
remains as far from virtue as from happiness, nor 
indicating any tendency to a return. So long as 
superstitions the most frightful, with their unmiti- 
gated horrors, continue to press, age after age, upon 
the larger portion of mankind, we do but shift a 
difficulty, not remove it, by denying the agency of an 
invisible enemy. 

This belief, whispered in all nations^ is uttered 
aloud wherever superstition has long ruled without 
a check. In half civilized and savage countries, the 
infernal agency flares upon our sight ; and, if we 
would be thoroughly equitable, ought we not to 
acknowledge, that, in civilized countries, indications 



CHRISTIANITY, 



73 



to the same effect are not ambiguous. May it not be 
more than surmised that the author of mischief who 
walks abroad with noisy pomp in pagan lands, keeps 
house among ourselves, and goes softly ? 

Is it affirmed to be a blasphemy to suppose that 
there can be a Satan within the bounds of God's 
universe ? Alas ! how many Tamerlanes, in ancient 
and in modern times, have shown us that we are not 
at liberty to reason in this manner ! The beauty 
and beneficent intention of creation," it is said, 
" rebuke the dogma of a personal Evil principle." 
But we ask, Why there may not be a Satan, if there 
be on earth tyrant tormenters, malignant calum- 
niators, and avowed enemies of peace, order, and 
purity ? Beneath the fair vault of heaven," you 
say, " there can be no agent of misery ; or no sphere 
for his malice, if there were one. — Look between 
decks of a slave ship, and tell us why there may not 
be a Satan. Alas ! the darkest surmises of super- 
stition have been only exaggerations of the things of 
earth ! And the horrid descriptions which deform the 
Koran are but wild dreams of things which have 
been actually transacted on earth ! When w^e go 
about ingeniously to trace the origin of the belief in 
an infernal world, to the horrors of eastern des- 
potism, what do we but exhibit incontestable proofs 
that, notwithstanding the goodness of God, such a 
world may be? 

Under the very same conditions stands the doc- 
trine of future punishment. The Saviour of the 
world vouches for the truth of this — the instinctive 

E 



74 



ON SPIRITUAL 



belief of the human race. He speaks of the " wrath 
to come," and solemnly warns us to escape from it. 
But is he therefore our enemy ? or is Christianity to 
be blamed on this account ? First let us be sure 
that the alarm it gives is groundless ; for if it be 
well founded, assuredly the Gospel is good news." 
That sort of infatuation which impels us to vent 
upon an innocent messenger, our vexation on hearing 
ill tidings, attaches to us when we resent the Gospel, 
because it involves the belief of the terrible retri- 
butions of the future world. 

In the present instance, after having fully admitted 
that the inspired v/ritings allow us no liberty to call 
in question the articles we have mentioned, we 
protest against the common error of loading reve- 
lation with the weight of them. If they be denied, 
the Gospel itself has no reason ; and wherever they 
have been denied, it has thrown off its characteristics 
of intensity and seriousness. 

Moreover, certain of the most sacred truths of 
religion must not be claimed as peculiar to Spiritual 
Christianity, inasmuch as they have long consisted 
with the most serious corruptions of its purity. Thus 
must we say that orthodoxy, although essential to 
Christianity, is yet, of itself, not Christianity. A 
fact indeed it is that churches which have declined 
from orthodoxy, or that have only wavered concern- 
ing it, have, without an exception, lost the warmth 
of religious feeling, as well as the purity of religious 
practice ; and after making a few descents, have 



CHRISTIANITY. 



75 



walked forth upon the broad level of deism, compro- 
mising almost the very name of Christian, 

If therefore it were asked, Is a trinitarian faith 
of much importance to practical piety ? '* we should 
be content to say — trace the history, either of indi- 
viduals, or of churches, that have renounced it, and 
you will find an answer. A trinitarian faith, clear 
of every evasion, and excluding, even the disposition 
to look for evasions, we hold to be the basis of all 
Christian piety. 

But now, with a due ingenuousness, let us look 
to the other side of this argument. Orthodoxy 
alone, is not, we say, Christianity, for it has con- 
sisted with the widest departures from its purport. 
More than a little constancy of faith and strength 
of mind are demanded in travelling over the road of 
the trinitarian controversy, from the early years of 
the third century, onward, toward modern times ; and 
if our belief have not previously been firmly grounded 
upon the proper biblical evidence, it is probable that 
the perusal of this history will breed doubt, disgust, 
suspicion ; and will end in a heterodox conclusion. 

The Greek mind, which had relinquished none of 
the faults of a better age, and which retained few of 
its admirable qualities, and which had been schooled 
in nugatory disputation by a degenerate philosophy, 
a sophistical logic, and a spurious rhetoric, found its 
field in the trinitarian argument. Ponderous tomes 
have brought this argument down to our times ; but 
how much of the warm apostolic feeling do these 
books present to our view ? Something indeed ; but 

E 2 



76 



ON SPIRITUAL 



not more in proportion to the mass, than there are 
grains of the precious metal to be gathered from a 
mud bank, in the offing of a gold coast. 

Orthodoxy, very early severed from evangelic truth, 
showed at once what was its quality, when so divorced. 
Some time before the breaking out of the trinitarian 
controversy, a discipline and course of life directly 
contravening the first principle of the Gospel had 
received the almost unanimous homage of the church, 
throughout the w^orld, and was applauded, on all 
sides, as the highest style of Christian piety. 

What moral influence was orthodoxy likely to 
exert, when it fell into the hands of those who had 
overlooked, or who virtually denied, the truths which 
alone can bring it home to the heart ? The Saviour, 
forgotten as " the end of the law, for righteousness, 
to every one that believeth/' was soon forgotten 
also as the one Mediator between God and man." 
Most instructive is the fact, that, at the very moment 
when trinitarian doctrine was the most hotly con- 
tended for, and punctiliously professed, mediators 
many, and gods many, and goddesses many, were 
receiving, under the auspices, and by the encourage- 
ment of the great preachers, theologians, and bishops 
of the time, the fervent devotions of the multitude ! 
It was to these potent intercessors that sincere peti- 
tions were addressed ; while to the Trinity was 
offered — a doxology ! Whenever men were in real 
trouble, and when they needed and heartily desired 
help from above, they sought it, where they believed 
they should the soonest find it — at the shrines of the 



CHRISTIANITY. 



77 



martyrs, or of the Virgin. No fact of church history 
carries a heavier lesson than that which we gather 
when, listening to the perorations of the great 
preachers of the age of orthodoxy, we hear them, 
first invoking, with animation, and high sounding 
phrases, a saint in the heavens, while the finger 
pointed to his glittering shrine : and then ascribing 

honour and glory" to the Trinity ! * 

Orthodoxy by itself, does not touch the conscience, 
does not quicken the affections ; it does not connect 
itself, in any manner, with the moral faculties. It 
is not a religion, but a theory ; and inasmuch as it 
awakens no spiritual feelings, it consists easily with 
either the grossest absurdities, or with the grossest 
corruptions. 

Orthodoxy, powerless when alone, becomes even 
efficient for evil at the moment when it combines 
itself with asceticism, superstition, and hierarchical 
ambition. What is the religious history of Europe, 
through a long course of time, but a narrative of the 
horrors and the immoralities that have sprung from 
this very combination ? 

Heterodoxy, which has long been the temptation 
of the continental protestant churches, has at length 
wrought their ruin ; — or, at the best, has left them in 
an expiring condition. But in perfect equity must 

^ The facts here adverted to — important in themselves, are gathering 
importance daily, inasmuch as an avowal — at length unambiguous, 
has been made, of the long disguised intention to restore the very 
system of which these impieties were a principal element. Some few 
samples of the ^'catholic" piety of the fourth century will be fur- 
nished in a supplementary note. 



7a 



ON SPIRITUAL 



it not be acknowledged that orthodoxy, severed from 
evangelic truth, has been the temptation of England ; 
and that, at this moment, by reviving its ancient 
connexion with superstition, it gives just alarm to 
the true sons of the reformers ? Those great men — 
the lights of the sixteenth century — whom we do 
not worship, but whose steps we would follow, were 
orthodox, and yet they were no monks : they w^ere 
Trinitarians, but they were not idolaters : they had 
studied the Fathers ; but they bowed to the Scrip- 
tures ; and from the Scriptures they recovered evan- 
gelic truth — inestimable treasure, which so many 
around us are now ready to exchange for the vainly- 
invented " superstitions of antiquity ! 

Furthermore, in defining the principles assumed to 
be peculiar to Spiritual Christianity, we must not 
name some points of belief which have been differ- 
ently understood, or might we say, differently misun- 
derstoody among the cordial adherents of evangelic 
piety. There are articles w^hich, though full of 
sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly 
persons," do not appear to all to be clear from 
extreme difficulties. 

We name then, as peculiar to Spiritual Chris- 
tianity, those truths which the human mind had 
never conceived of until the Gospel, and its pre- 
cursive types, had appeared — those truths which, 
although they lie broadly on the surface of the 
apostolic writings, so many learned interpreters have 
endeavoured, by all means, and with indefatigable 



CHRISTIANITY. 



79 



industry, to dispel from the Christian system, those 
truths which the pride of the heart the most highly 
resents, but in which the contrite spirit finds its 
peace. 

First in systematic order, as well as in magnitude, 
is the doctrine of the Propitiation, effected by the 
Son of God — so held clear of admixtures and evasions, 
as to sustain, in its bright integrity, the consequent 
doctrine of The full and absolute restoration 

OF GUILTY man TO THE FAVOUR OF GoD, On his 

acceptance of this method of mercy ; — or, as it is 
technically phrased, " Justification through 
FAITH." A doctrine this, which, in a peculiar 
manner, refuses to be tampered with, or compro- 
mised ; and which will hold its own place, or none. 
It challenges for itself, not only a broad basis, on 
which it m.ay rest alone ; but a broad border, upon 
which nothing that is human may trespass. 

This doctrine when unadulterate, not only animates 
orthodoxy, but shows us why it was necessary to lay 
open the mystery of the Divine nature, so far as it is 
laid open in scriptural trinltarian doctrine ; for we 
could not have learned the method of salvation, 
without first learning. that. He who bore our sins," 
was indeed able to bear them, and was, in himself, 
*^ mighty to save." 

Whatever belongs to the Divine Nature must be 
incomprehensible by the human mind ; and there- 
fore — the incarnation is incomprehensible ; and 
therefore — the atonement involves a mystery incom- 
prehensible ; but not so the consequent doctrine of 



80 



ON SPIRITUAL 



justification througli faith. This doctrine turns upon 
the well understood relations of a forensic substi- 
tution ; and as to transactions of this order, they are 
among the clearest of any with which we have to do, 
as the subjects of law and government. 

Yet simple as it is in itself, the doctrine of justifi- 
cation through the intervention of our legal sponsor, 
does, as we fully admit, rest upon a supposition so 
stupendous that we are fain to recoil, and to ask, 

can such things be true ? " 

— Is it true indeed, that the Eternal Word was 
*^made flesh and that, as man, he put himself in 
the place of the guilty ? Look abroad upon the wide 
field of nature, and then come home, and calmly 
consider what it is you imply when you speak of 
being "justified through faith in Christ;" of whom 
you say, that he is equal with God, and that he 

upholdeth all things by the word of his power !" 

It is, we grant it — a spectacle of wonders which 
the Scriptures open before us on this ground ; but 
are these wonders of such a kind that we may 
readily attribute them to the inventive faculty of 
minds like our own ? Let us however trace with 
care the steps by which we have come into the pro- 
spect of mysteries such as these : — ^just as a traveller 
looks anew to his footing when, having reached a 
mountain summit, through mists, which the morning 
breeze suddenly rolls away, he beholds with amaze- 
ment kingdoms outstretched beneath his feet. 

In bringing the mind distinctly to contemplate the 
Scriptural doctrine of the atonement eflfected by the 



CHRISTIANITY. 



SI 



death of Christ, we feel ourselves to have reached an 
elevation higher than the highest of the speculations 
of man.- — We are compelled to confess ourselves in 
the presence of things divine and eternal. 

What then are the steps by which we reach this 
height ? — Let us retrace them ; and they are few.- — 
The books of the New Testament are unimpeachable 
as to their genuineness and authenticity ; and we are 
compelled to acknowledge the grace, majesty, and 
wisdom of the Saviour of whom they speak. — He 
claims the right to teach us sacred truth ; and to 
teach it to mankind to the end of the world. The 
apostolic writings are warranted as the vehicles of the 
Saviour s instructions ; and unless we can rely upon 
these, in their obvious meaning, and after we have 
used all diligence to ascertain it, this Teacher can be 
no teacher to us; nor this Saviour our Saviour. 
How should he be so, if we may not thus confide in 
the intelligible import of a known language ; for on 
the contrary supposition, we have no means remain- 
ing within our reach, of knowing certainly the terms 
of the salvation herein offered to us. We do then 
rely with ingenuous confidence upon the gramma- 
tical sense of the apostolic writings. We follow 
whithersoever these messengers of Heaven may lead 
us. Whatever they plainly affirm, w^e must either 
accept as true, or must disclaim their authority. 

But Christ's ministers teach us, if language can 
convey such a meaning, that he was indeed God 
manifest in the flesh" — God over all, blessed for 
ever." 

E 3 



82 



ON SPIRITUAL 



If we draw back from sucli a doctrine, as in 
dismay, let us look to the alternative.— The book 
which compels us to believe that it is from God, and 
the only book in the world that embodies a perfect 
morality, and the only book that contains an authen- 
tic hope of immortality for man, is then, if we cannot 
admit this doctrine, so ambiguous, nay, so delusive in 
its language, that it can warrant no certain conclu- 
sions on any subject. Granted, that the incarnation 
and the atonement are stupendous mysteries, which 
surpass our reason, and try our faith : but the alter- 
native supposition— that the book of God may not 
be trusted, poisons faith, and breaks reason on the 
wheel. 

Jesus then is divine in the highest sense ; but why 
divine ? Wherefore has the " Son left the bosom of 
the Father?" The means are infinite, is the end 
such ? For what specific purpose was it that he who 
is the brightness of the Father's glory," " abhorred 
not the virgin's womb," and walked the earth, and 
conversed as man, with man ? Was it only to teach 
us virtue ? or was it only to embody it ? But then 
where is the proportion of the means to the end ? 

But we say, it was to suffer, " the just for the 
unjust ;" and those who hold Christian truth thus 
far, undoubtedly hold that which is of saving efficacy : 
but we must advance yet further, if we would exclude 
the most serious errors. The doctrine of the atone- 
ment, dimly perceived, or at least not held in con- 
nexion with its forensic consequence, became little 
more, to the ancient church, than a spectacle of 



CHRISTIANITY. 



83 



wonder and pathos, to be exhibited at certain seasons 
of the year ; and in its turn with the commemoration 
of other martyrdoms ! 

The Church history of fourteen centuries affords 
convincing proof that something more than the doc- 
trine of the propitiatory work of Christ, retained in 
a creed, is necessary to give vitality to the Christian 
system. Very early the wonders of Calvary, in turn 
with the eulogies of the saints, were the themes of 
the cold, turgid rhapsodies of a false oratory. 

Almost every practice, rite, and principle of 
the ancient church had the same tendency to re- 
move, further and further from its place, although 
it was never denied, the scriptural doctrine of the 
atonement. The Apostle had said, " there is now no 
condemnation to them that believe and that the 
sacrifice for sins, once offered," effected an abso- 
lute expiation. But it was not so in the sense of anti- 
quity. — The expiation did not expiate ; for the 
ascetics discovered that they had still the whole work 
of satisfaction to do for themselves. The expiation 
did not expiate ; for the church was constantly oc- 
cupied in praying for the repose of souls, affirmed by 
itself to have received the utmost benefit which could 
be received from a sincere faith in Christ. The 
sacrifice once offered for the sins of the world did 
not, any more than those offered under the Mosaic 
dispensation, **make the, comers thereunto perfect;" 
for it needed to be reiterated in the sacrifice of the 
mass. It was not true, in the opinion of the church, 
that we are saved from wrath" through Christ, for 



84 



ON SPIRITUAL 



it taught even the faithful to look forward to a ter- 
rible futurity of purgatorial anguish. 

No fact, connected with the history of opinions, is 
w^e think more conspicuously certain than this, that 
the ancient church, while holding trinitarian doctrine, 
and while professing to believe in the atonement, had, 
in some inexplicable manner, compromised, or lost 
sight of, the principal element of Apostolic Chris- 
tianity. 

Compare, for a moment, the broad aspect of the 
Mosaic dispensation, and that of the ancient church 
system. The Psalms, and the other devotional por- 
tions of the Old Testament, make it evident that, 
although the ritual economy did not fully open the 
scheme of divine mercy toward man, it did yet avail 
to convey a calm and affectionate comfort to the heart 
of the contrite worshipper. As a proof that it did 
so, we may appeal, not merely to the pure spiri- 
tuality which breathes through the Psalms, and the 
prophetic writings; but also to the significant fact 
that it was not until sometime after the close of the 
prophetic dispensation, that the Jewish people went 
oflTinto that fanaticism which exhibits the uneasiness 
of a guilty conscience, wholly ignorant of the Divine 
mercy. 

Most remarkable is the contrast which presents 
itself in comparing, on this ground, the ancient 
Jewish, and the ancient Christian church. The 
pious members of the former did enjoy the still- 
ness and the illumination of an early morning time ; 
and they looked with the comfort of hope toward 



CHRISTIANITY. 



85 



the spreading brightness of the sunward sky. But 
after that the one sacrifice had superseded its types, 
infatuated men, with the Gospel open in their hands, 
and although they had eyes to see, saw not its glory ; 
but deprived themselves of all its blessings. The 
Jewish church had lived upon hope ; the Christian 
church seemed to have inherited despair. The most 
ferocious, as well as absurd methods of placating the 
wrath of Heaven, joined with the doctrine that sin 
after Baptism, that is to say, the vast majority of all 
sins, could be entitled only to an ambiguous forgive- 
ness, denied peace to the consciences, as well of the 
few, as of the many. 

A forensic act, authoritatively announced, and in 
consequence of which the condemned stands exempt 
from the demands of Law, whether it rest on the 
ground of his afterwards established innocence, or of 
any satisfaction he may have been able to propound, 
must be, in its nature absolute. It is not an unde- 
fined indulgence ; it is not a weak connivance ; it is 
not a timid compromise ; it is not an evasion which 
must be held to condemn, if not the Law, its ad- 
ministrators. After such a transaction has been 
recorded in court, and proclaimed aloud, no conduct, 
on the part of him who has been so discharged, could 
be more offensive than that of an endeavour to go 
over the ground again ; as if to effect the same result, 
on conditions less humiliating to himself. 

In the justification of man through the mediation 
of Christ, man individually, as guilty, and his Divine 



86 



ON SPIRITUAL 



Sponsor, personally competent to take upon himself 
such a party stand forward in tlie Court of Heaven ; 
there to be severally dealt v^ith as the honour of 
Law^ shall demand ; and if the representative of the 
guilty be indeed thus qualified, in the eye of the law, 
and if the guilty, on his part, freely accept this mode 
of satisfaction, then, when the one recedes from the 
position of danger, and the other steps into it. Justice, 
having already admitted both the competency of the 
substitute, and the sufficiency of the substitution, is 
itself silent. 

Such a transaction does indeed originate in grace 
or favour ; but yet if it satisfy law, it can be open to 
no species of after interference. Now in the method 
of justification through faith, God himself solemnly 
proclaims that the rectitude of his government is not 
violated ; nor the sanctity of his law compromised. 
It is He who declares that, in this method, he " may 
be justj while justifying the ungodly." After such a 
proclamation from Heaven has been made, " who is 
he that condemneth ? It is God that justifieth !" 

A sacred doctrine this ! — not to be tampered 
with ; and most honoured, assuredly, when admitted 
with a simple-hearted and joyful gratitude ! If 
it be asked, "Is it a truth?" in reply, besides 
citing the apostolic authorities, which are most ex- 
plicit, we might well ask— Whence such a doctrine 
might proceed, if not from God ? Which of the 
creations of the human mind does it resemble ? 
Whether we regard that aspect of it in which it is 
thoroughly intelligible ; or that in which it presents 



CHRISTIANITY. 



87 



an inscrutable mystery, it stands equally remote from 
the customary style of human speculations ; beside 
that it contravenes the pride and prejudices of the 
heart. Clear and bright as noon is this Truth : vast 
and deep as infinity. 

Nevertheless, we suppose an objector to declare 
that he can by no means bring himself to embrace 
a doctrine involving v^hat this involves. Let him 
however well consider on what part of the great 
scheme of man's salvation, as taught in the Scriptures, 
the real difficulty presses. — We believe that, with 
most objectors, it is placed too far forward. Fully 
do we grant it to be indeed a mystery that guilty 
man should be delivered from the hands of justic-e 
by the personal intervention of his Sovereign ; and 
yet, is there not a previous ground of amazement in 
the mere fact, admitted as it is by all who do not 
deny man's individual responsibility, that he — feeble 
as he is, and frail, should, by the Creator and Sove- 
reign of the universe, be held personally answer- 
able for the acts of so brief a course ? Is not this 
the mystery ? and after we have mastered this, or 
at least have found that, amazing as it is, we can 
by no means evade it ; there will remain no sufficient 
pretext for rejecting, as incredible, the wonders which 
attach to the mode of his deliverance. Is it true 
that the children of earth are severally the subjects 
of a universal government, and that they shall singly 
be called to account at that tribunal ? If we find 
that this must be granted, the way is open also for 
the mystery of mercy. 



88 



ON SPIRITUAL 



On the other hand, when once we have delibe- 
rately rejected the scheme of salvation, as if it were 
incredible, we shall find it only so much the more 
difficult to retain our hold of those notions of virtue 
apart from which man can neither respect himself, 
nor his fellows, and which are found to be the neces- 
sary means of social order, and of personal control. 

If these notions of a moral system (in the religious 
sense of the terms) be once abandoned, then there is 
no home for man — for his towering conceptions of hap- 
piness— for his boundless hopes — -for his pure affec- 
tions — for his domestic felicity — for his sentiments of 
virtue and honour ; there is no resting-place short of 
that sensual swamp, whereon, although he may take 
his level with the brute orders, he becomes the in- 
famy of the creation — the enigma of the universe ; 
while they remain as they were, the instances of the 
wisdom and benevolence of its Author. 

But it is not possible to abandon the religious 
notion of a moral system ; and the more intimately 
we follow this notion out, in its consequences, the 
more deeply shall we feel that the mystery of redemp- 
tion is anticipated by the equal wonders of that re- 
lationship between the finite and the Infinite which 
is involved when the Supreme Being condescends 
to challenge men, singly, as offenders, and as an- 
swerable, individually, to Himself. 

By this very challenge man — not as a race^ but as 
an individual^ is assumed to be a morally independent 
and free agent, in a sense which lifts him from the dust 
to a level of reciprocity with God. The Eternal Ruler 



CHRISTIANITY. 



89 



of the Universe declares himself a party in a controversy 
in which each individual of the human race separately 
sustains the opposite position. No liberty is granted 
to us to recede from the high, but ominous dignity of 
thus waging battle with the Almighty : this is a 
nobility we are born to ; and if in no other man- 
ner, yet by acts of wilful rebellion, have we singly 
accepted the distinction, and stand pledged to the 
consequences. ] 

At this point then is the true knot of the difficulty 
which is supposed to attach to the scheme of man's 
salvation ; and those who are staggered by its vastness, 
would do well to consider how far they wdll have to step 
back, toward the ground of the most abject animal 
philosophy, before they can reach a level where indeed 
there is no mystery to be encountered, because there 
is no Truth to be grasped. And yet, even if that level 
were reached — what perplexities still surround us ! 
On this level — the level of atheistic sensualism, we 
meet a being, endowed (with cursed) intellectual 
faculties, which enable him to bring under review, 
and to measure, and weigh, a moral system, and to 
calculate the consequences of allowing himself to be 
reckoned a member of such a system ; and then, 
finding these consequences undesirable — to cut him- 
self off from it (in will at least) and by a deliberate 
suicidal act, to die — to the extent of half his nature ! 
Are we in search of doctrines which may be scouted 
as incredible, and which reason must indignantly 
resent ? Here then is such a doctrine — incredible, 
not because mysterious, but because monstrous. But 



90 



ON SPIRITUAL 



how do we seem to breathe anew when, after reject- 
ing enormities such as these, we accept that which — 
mystery as it is, we yet assent to, as the true harmony 
of our moral faculties ! 

Is redemption a mystery ? but let us well consider 
the invisible wonders that are more than dimly 
indicated — by the vast range — the depth, intensity, 
and force of the feelings proper to an unschooled 
conscience. If opinions, or if creeds," may be 
factitious, affections are not so. How absurd the 
supposition that they can be ! Take then a sen- 
sible and unsophisticated mind ; and, only adapting 
your style to its style — to its acquired medium of 
thought, may you not at once, and with ease, confer 
with it on the entire range of ethical questions ? will 
it not respond and consent, while you reason con- 
cerning righteousness, temperance, and judgment to 
come" — while you speak of duty to man, and of duty 
to God, and while you bring the moral sense into 
contact with eternal truth and virtue ? 

The moral system then, and the religious position 
of man as related to God is a. fact, not a theory. How 
should you be able to awaken, in a sensitive unso- 
phisticated bosom, and by the magic of a single word, 
the pungent sense of shame and demerit ; or the glow 
of virtuous sympathy, if the Creator had not, by his 
own endowments, made man, so far, a partaker of his 
own nature ? How could you excite, within a guile- 
less, and yet not guiltless bosom, the anguish of 
compunction ; how heave it with the swellings of 
repentance, if the waters there were not deep ? They 



CHRISTIANITY. 91 

are deep ; and the agitations of that bosom — its ebb- 
ings and Sowings of love, fear, resentment, gratitude, 
are but waves breaking upon the shore of an ocean ; 
and the sounds they bring to an attentive ear, are 
the murmurs of the deep — even the vast profound 
of the moral universe ! 

We boldly say then, that the incontestable facts of 
the relationship between man, individually, and the 
Eternal God — a relationship at once of community 
of moral nature, and of forensic dependence, if duly 
considered, preclude every objection to which the 
scheme of redemption might seem liable, as if it 
involved more than can be granted to be possible. 
Such objections are, we say, precluded, inasmuch as 
they are anticipated by a mystery as vast; and yet 
not to be denied. 

But we suppose the scriptural doctrine of human 
salvation effected by the propitiatory sufferings of the 
Son of God to be assented to. By what rule then do 
we discriminate betw^een a cold orthodoxy in respect 
to it, and an evangelic faith ? Our rule must in this 
instance be an experimental, rather than an abstract 
one : — a rule not so much polemical as practical. 

It seems reasonable to affirm, that, if the apostolic 
doctrine of justification through faith be clearly held 
and cordially admitted, it will occupy the foremost 
place in our regards ; for it is the ground of all our 
hopes, and the relief of every fear : it is the luminous 
centre of all religious truth. It is the sun in our 
heavens : it is the source of light, and the source of 



92 



ON SPIRITUAL 



vital warmth. We do not therefore hesitate to affirm 
that it is scripturally held only by those who do 
assign to it this prominent position ; who recur to it 
ever and again with delight, who never feel it to be an 
exhausted theme ; who build their own hopes upon 
it firmly ; who invite others to do the same with con- 
fidence ; who neither distrust it in theory, nor dis- 
honour it in practice ; who enounce it freely, and 
boldly; and of whose piety it is the spring and 
reason. 

On the contrary, we cannot but impute a want of 
apostolic feeling, as well as a dimness of religious 
perception, to those, whatever articles may be ex- 
pressed in their creed, who speak reluctantly on this 
great theme, or ambiguously, or in a tone of evasion ; 
who now confess it, now deny it ; and whose writings 
or discourses on the subject, baffle the endeavours of 
the most candid to ascertain what it is they really 
believe. 

And without a doubt, or a moment's hesitation, we 
charge those with disaffection towards this first prin- 
ciple of Apostolic Christianity, who would fain 
" reserve" it for the hearing of a few, and would put 
it, and keep it, under their bushel. We utterly dis- 
allow, as spurious, the delicacy of those who profess 
that they cannot desecrate so sacred a truth as that of 
the Atonement, by proclaiming it in the hearing of 
the thoughtless multitude ! 

The great question now at issue in the protestant 
church is not whether we shall restore or reject certain 
ancient superstitions ; but whether we are to retain 



CHRISTIANITY. 



93 



that Gospel — that bright apostolic truth, which those 
superstitions so early supplanted, and with which 
it never has for a moment consisted, and never will 
consist. The question on which, at this hour, the 
religious destinies of England turn, is not whether we 
shall re-establish, or shall repudiate, the Romish," or 
any other doctrine, concerning purgatory, pardons, 
worshipping and adoration, as well of Images, as of 
relics, and also invocation of saints ; — those fond 
things, vainly invented, and grounded upon no war- 
ranty of scripture ; but rather repugnant to the 
word of God." — This is kot the question ; but 
whether the righteousness of God through faith," 
shall stand or fall among us ; and whether the Pro- 
testant Church itself, shall continue to be a witness 
for God, or shall be rejected as apostate. If the 
distinctly pronounced doctrine of justification through 
faith be indeed apostolic, can the bold restorers of 
the base superstitions of the fourth century make out 
their title to the honours of Apostolicity ? How can 
we grant it them ; or how refuse to assign it to those 
who having clearly read this apostolic truth in 
the apostolic writings, cordially entertain it, and 
convincingly teach it; and who honour it in their 
lives, and whose orders are authenticated by the 
Holy Spirit, in giving efficacy to the word of his 



94 



ON SPIRITUAL 



II. 

The Second great truth, peculiar, as we believe, to 
Spiritual Christianity, is that of The sovereign 

AND ABIDING INFLUENCE OF THE HoLY SpiRIT IN 
RENOVATING THE SOUL, IN EACH INSTANCE IN WHICH 
IT IS RENOVATED. 

This doctrine also, like the preceding, while in 
one view it is an inscrutable mystery, is in another 
an intelligible truth, which accords at once with our 
consciousness, and with the principles of sound philo- 
sophy. The contact of the Infinite Mind with the 
finite, is indeed a depth ; but not so the restoration 
of the moral faculties, as a matter of consciousness. 
The gradual predominance of better impulses, where 
the worse have had sway, is no abyss wherein faith is 
staggered ; nor is even the fact, when it occurs, diffi- 
cult to be admitted, of a sudden breaking down of the 
obduracy of the will, and the yielding of pride, and 
the subsiding of the tempest of passion, and the 
dying away of earthly desires. Whether the com- 
mencement of such a change be conspicuously marked, 
or not, is a point not important. What is there, we 
ask, either in the fact of such a change, or in its being 
attributed to the divine agency, which reason ought 
to resent? It may be offensive to pride; but we 
boldly say it is not so to reason ; and it can become so 
only in consequence of mystifications which may have 
been thereto attached. 

It may be well here to state the distinction between 
mystery, and mystification ; or between the inscrutable 



CHRISTIANITY. 



95 



and the perplexed* Those things may properly be 
called mysterious which, either in their own nature, 
or from the peculiarity of their position toward us, 
transcend the powers of the human mind to grasp 
them: they are things which may be known of, 
although not known. The divine omnipotence is a 
mystery, and the omnipresence; and so is the in- 
disputable truth, that the Eternal Being is related to 
the successive points of duration — the past, the pre- 
sent, and the future, in one and the same manner, 
whatever that may be ; or, to use a mathematical 
analogy, that His relation to time is measurable, at 
all points, by the same radius. 

But mystification is factitious mystery ; or, it 
is the heaping of obscurity upon things which, in 
their nature, come within the range of the senses, 
or of the consciousness, or of the reasoning faculty. 
To affirm that a substance familiar to four of the 
senses has suddenly ceased to be what our perceptions 
declare it yet to remain, is mystification, not mystery; 
nor is such a dogma to be admitted without inflicting 
an injury upon the intellectual and moral faculties, 
fatal, in an equal degree, to the vitality of faith, and 
to the integrity of reason. 

Those early, and alas! not extinct superstitions 
which stood connected with the doctrine of the ope- 
rations of the Holy Spirit were all of this class. How 
was a most sacred truth transmuted into a frivolous 
mystification, when men were taught to look for the 
renovating infiuences of the Holy Spirit — not into 
their own bosoms, but to the fingers of the priest ! 



96 



ON SPIRITUAL 



But a true philosophy will not, we think, condemn 
as irrational the following affirmations — -That a great 
— an entire change in the condition and habits of the 
moral faculties — or what may well be called a 
renovation of them, is indispensable to our recovery 
of true virtue and felicity. 

■ — That men, unassisted from above, do not — and 
we may add, cannot, effect any such renovation of 
their moral nature. 

—That this happy change, wherever it takes place, 
must therefore be regarded as the immediate effect of 
a divine influence upon the mind. 

— That this change coincides with, and is undis- 
tinguishable from, the natural and ordinary operations 
of the mind : — that is to say, it is a moral restoration ; 
neither preternatural in the sense of the enthusiast; 
nor semi-miraculous in the sense of those who uphold 
sacramental and ritual mystifications. 

Let it only be granted that true felicity must consist 
in the predominance of holy affections, or of emotions 
habitually tending toward God; and let it also be 
granted that no such affections ordinarily belong to 
us, nor spontaneously spring up or grow with our 
growth ; then must we not acknowledge that the 
doctrine so clearly affirmed in Scripture of the sove- 
reign renovating influences of the Holy Spirit is full 
of consolation to ourselves, as well as strictly accord- 
ant with the best conceptions we can form of the 
goodness of God ? 

What then is conversion, but an act of sovereign 
benevolence, the highest in its intention, and the most 



CHRISTIANITY. 



97 



to be desired ; and whicli, if we deal faithfully with 
ourselves, we must confess to be needed not less ab- 
solutely (if we are to be happy) than is that creative 
power to which we owe, every moment, existence 
itself? 

Now we are fairly entitled to claim this sacred 
truth — the doctrine of the sovereign, renovating in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit in the heart, and the direct 
source and cause of whatever is holy, as peculiar to 
Spiritual Christianity^ inasmuch as, like the doctrine 
of justification through faith, it has (even when ad- 
mitted in words) been constantly evaded, or supplanted, 
on the one side by rationalists, and on the other by 
the promoters of superstition, ancient and modern. 

Great truths are always lost or retained together ; 
and the two we have named have both been re- 
moved from the view of the mass of professed 
Christians, through a long course of time, by the 
substitution of symbols, for the things signified ; and 
by the practice of so magnifying the rites which typify 
spiritual realities, as to throw these into the shade. 

It was vain to suppose that the mass of men would 
continue to think of justification, and sanctification, 
and of fitness for Heaven, as moral and spiritual 
realities, when they were assured, in the most solemn 
manner, that justification, sanctification, and pre- 
paration for heaven, all passed upon them, uncon- 
sciously, at the moment when they emerged from the 
baptismal pool ! 

But at this point we are warned not to trifle 
with things sacred." God forbid that we should 

F 



98 



ON SPIRITUAL 



do so^ while intending to plead for the most serious 
truths ! But in this instance we repel the imputation 
with confidence, and affirm that it is not we who trifle 
with things sacred, — What things then are sacred ? 
The rites of religion are so, when they hold their 
place ; but they become mischievous impieties, when 
thrust from it. To rites we assign the utmost mea- 
sure of importance which, so far as we can gather, 
the Apostles teach us to assign to them; and we 
dare attach no more; and especially because all re- 
ligious history exhibits the infatuated determination 
of the human mind to evade realities, if it be pos- 
sible, by the aid of ceremonies. 

But we say it is not the adherents of evangelic 
doctrine who trifle with things sacred. Surely the 
immortal welfare of man is sacred ; and yet how is this 
sported with by those who lull the conscience with a 
promise of salvation that may be managed by proxy ! 
Must not one tremble to witness the temerity of those 
who, with little or no inquiry into the condition of 
the soul, yet venture to grant passports into eternity ? 

But it is not we who trifle with things sacred, or 
even with the symbols of such things ; and we appeal 
to the fact that, wherever Spiritual Christianity most 
flourishes, there the genuine ordinances of Christ are 
the most reverently and affectionately regarded. 

Yet again — we hold nothing on earth to be more 
sacred, than is the work of the Holy Spirit, w^hen 
clearly manifested in the temper and unblamable 
conduct of Christian men. If there be any instances 
in which the reality of religion comes home to our 



CHRISTIANITY. 



99 



convictions with irresistible force, it is when we con- 
verse wdth those who themselves hold much com- 
munion with God. As the Agent is most sacred, so 
is his work ; nor can there be, as we think, an im- 
piety more bold than that of those who, after dis- 
tinctly contemplating the work of the Spirit of God, 
indubitably displayed in the walk and heavenly dis- 
positions of Christian men, dare to scout it as 
altogether factitious, because, forsooth, the Christianity 
of these seeming Christians is open to the suspicion of 
having reached them through some indirect channel ! 
Thus to walk forth amid the most precious of the 
works of God, trampling without remorse upon what- 
ever does not happen to lie within a certain eccle- 
siastical border, must be held to indicate — is it the 
highest moral courage — or not rather, a temper most 
irreligious, as well as arrogant. 

This is indeed to trifle with things sacred ; and the 
more so when it is remembered that the prevalence 
of so intolerant a theorv, and the bold avowal of it 
by those who are regarded as the best informed ex- 
pounders of Christianity, silently but extensively 
operates to drive cultured and ingenuous minds into 
deism or atheism. What is this Christianity, say 
such, which, while professing to be a rehgion, not of 
bondage and forms, but of truth and love, neverthe- 
less impels its adherents to violate all charity on the 
precarious ground of an elaborate hypothesis ! 

It is unavoidable thus pointedly to advert to these 
now prevalent errors, because, in the practical interpre- 
tation given them, they are absolutely incompatible 

F 2 



100 



ON SPIRITUAL 



with an adherence to Spiritual Christianity. Those 
who are sternly enjoined, on peril of their own sal- 
vation, not to recognise as Christian brethren any 
whose ecclesiastical legitimacy may be ambiguous, 
are, of necessity, driven to adopt such a notion of 
Christian piety as may consist with the application of 
this ecclesiastical rule. In plain words, they must 
learn to scout as futile or illusory, whatever is moral 
and spiritual in religion ; while they fix their at- 
tention exclusively upon that which is formal and 
adjunctive. Nor will those who are taught to judge 
of others in this manner, be slow to judge of 
themselves, on the same principle. If we be 
Christians ecclesiastically , it is enough : all besides 
is illusion." 

And such in fact are every day seen to be the 
products of the ecclesiastical theory which we 
denounce as, at this time, the antagonist of Spiritual 
Christianity. In its recent revival it has shed a cold 
arrogance into many bosoms that once glowed with 
Christian affection ; and, at the same time, it has 
drawn such aside (in how many sad instances !) 
from an enlightened regard to the substantial truths 
of the Gospel ; while they give all their cares to 
frivolous and servile observances. 

But we turn to a happier theme, Happy indeed, 
and ennobling, as well as efficacious, is the belief, 
that He " from whom all holy desires, good counsels, 
and just works do proceed," dwelleth in us, as the 
Author of spiritual life ! In a word, that the body 
of the Christian is the temple of the Holy Ghost." 



CHRISTIANITY, 



101 



A doctrine this, which, if scripturally held, precludes 
at once despondency and presumption. For how 
should we despond, if He who creates us anew in 
Christ Jesus," is almighty? or how presume, if we 
be convinced that, w^ere the sacred energy withdrawn, 
there would remain in us no good thing ? " 

III. 

We reach then our ultimate position, and the 
THIRD TRUTH, peculiar, as we assume, to Spiritual 
Christianity, w^hich is this — that a cordial recep- 
tion OF THE TWO already NAMED, JUSTIFICATION 
THROUGH FAITH, AND THE SOVEREIGN INDWELLING 
INFLUENCES OF THE HoLY SPIRIT, BRINGS WITH IT 
A SETTLED AND AFFECTIONATE SENSE OF SECURITY, 
OR PEACE AND JOY IN BELIEVING, WHICH BECOMES 
THE SPRING OF HOLY TEMPERS, AND VIRTUOUS CON- 
DUCT. 

Man, created for happiness, is truly virtuous only 
so far as he is happy. Virtue may indeed be in a 
suffering condition ; but never is it actually severed 
from happiness ; for it is never cut off' from com- 
munion with Him who is the fountain of joy. 

The Apostle, not speaking as in the person of one 
who had been admitted into the third heavens, and 
had witnessed the delights of paradise ; but when 
addressing Christians, as such, appeals to their con- 
sciousness, and affirms it as a common truth, that, 

being justified by faith, they have peace wdth God, 



102 



ON SPIRITUAL 



through our Lord Jesus Christ ; and rejoice in hope 
of the glory of God." " The love of God," he says, 

is shed abroad in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost 
which is given unto us." He enjoins Christians, as 
their characteristic duty, to "rejoice always;" and 
he repeats the injunction, as if to remind them that 
he had not forgotten the many sources of uneasiness 
which might disturb their happiness, and which yet, 
in his view, should not destroy it. 

If the Gospel be "glad tidings," can it be 
strange that it should make those glad who heartily 
receive it? or would it not be strange if it did 
not ? Are we anxious that our Christianity should 
be apostolic ? let us then hear " the chief of the 
Apostles," who' afSrms that although the object of 
faith be unseen, yet the Christian, loving his Saviour, 
and believing in him, " rejoices with joy unspeakable, 
and full of glory." If to ourselves any such state of 
mind, or such affections, or any such happiness, be 
not known, or easily conceived of, our faith itself 
should be examined anew. 

" Perfect love," says " the beloved disciple ;" 
that is to say, genuine love, " casteth out fear;" and 
with it " torment." 

Through the knowledge of the Gospel, and the 
hearty reception of its promises, we are " made par- 
takers of the Divine nature." But God is " blessed 
for evermore." Shall we then be drawing near to this 
nature continually, without a happy consciousness of 
the felicity we are approaching ? Shall we come up 
to the fountain of light, and receive thence no illumi- 



CHRISTIANITY, 



103 



nation? Those do not appear to know much of 
human nature who are jealous of happiness, as an 
energy of virtue ; or who suppose that virtue on earth 
will not show whence she has descended, and w^hither 
she is going. 

Bring this principle to a familiar test. The king- 
dom of heaven, we are expressly told, is a paternal 
system of love and duty : it is not a despotism. Now, 
if we be personally familiar with the materials whence 
our illustration may draw its analogy, let us look 
within the circle of a family, and there make trial of 
the opposite methods of eliciting the greatest amount 
of effective service^ and of dutiful performances ; that 
is to say, of filial virtue. First, let us work the prin- 
ciple of bondage and fear. Let dread be the prime 
impulse of every domestic movement, and love a rare 
and ^precarious blessing. Let the paternal tenderness, 
if felt at all, yet be disguised by frowns, and let it 
express itself, in all instances, so ambiguously that 
the child may reasonably question its very existence ; 
and let each son and daughter, from the youngest to 
the eldest, constantly have in view, as a chilling 
caution, the possible, and not very improbable event, 
of a final expulsion from the paternal home, and a 
cutting off from all share in the inheritance. Make 
trial of this method, until you have converted a home 
into a prison, and children into abject and resentful 
slaves ! 

But assume the opposite principle. Do not exclude 
fear ; yet govern by love. Do not exclude suf- 
fering ; but never, so far as your power may avail, 



104 



ON SPIRITUAL 



never let suffering exclude happiness. Let all be as 
happy at home as the conditions of the present state 
may admit ; and especially let all feel that happiness 
is secured to the utmost extent to which parental 
vigilance may reach. Whatever variety of disposition 
a family so treated may exhibit, can there be a doubt 
that it will immeasurably surpass the wretched family, 
in filial obedience, as well as in attachment? 

— If we then, being evil, yet know how to rule 
our households by the means of love and joy, how 
shall not our heavenly Father much rather know how 
to do the same ? 

But where then, it may be asked, is our security 
against presumption, or a licentious abuse of Chris- 
tian privileges? The same apostolic word that 
enjoins us to rejoice, conveys the necessary precau- 
tion; and to take up the precaution, forgetting the 
privilege which it balances, is surely as great an 
error as to use the privilege, and to forget the pre- 
caution. A true belief of the Gospel brings with it 
a belief also of the fact which the Gospel attests. 
The Christian who indeed believes himself to be saved 
will recollect from what, and at what cost, and 
to what end. 

In all cases in which the human mind comes habi- 
tually under the control of a single motive, or of 
motives of one cast and tendency, the consequence is 
some species of extravagance, bordering often upon 
insanity. If we are to be powerfully, and at the 
same time healthfully affected, it must be by motives 
which act upon us in the way of counterpoise, or of 



CHRISTIANITY. 



105 



mutual correction ; and the product of which is a 
joint product of forces moving in different, if not 
opposite directions. 

The motives of spiritual — evangelic Christianity 
are of this composite kind. They are deep contra- 
rieties, thoroughly harmonized. The motives and 
reasons of an assured peace and joy, spring directly 
from considerations the most profoundly afflictive, 
or humiliating. It is in this manner that moral 
force is generated ; and yet a force which is of health- 
ful and happy tendency. 

Is it true that the Eternal Word — was made 
flesh, and dwelt among us," and " died for our sins,'' 
having been constituted " a curse for us ?" Sin then 
is ruin — immortal ruin ; and our condition, if not bene- 
fited by that sacrifice, is desperate. But the Saviour, 
as we learn from his own lips, although given by the 
Father, to suffer for the sins of the whole world," 
yet gave himself for his people, individually. The 
propitiation, which was sufficient for taking away 
the sin of the w^orld," has no excess of sufficiency in 
relation to the sin of each believer. On this ground 
the apostle speaks of his Lord as having ^' loved Jtim, 
and given himself for him J' 

A distinct apprehension, therefore, of truths such as 
these, brings home to the heart every kind of power- 
ful influence — every imaginable element of awe, 
compunction, dread, gratitude, and tender affection, 
to which the human mind may be open. And just in 
proportion as sentiments of the one kind become 
intense, those of the opposite quality are enhanced, 

r3 



106 



ON SPIRITUAL 



Why then may not the Christian who has learned 
to renounce all confidence in himself, as well as in 
beings like himself, and to trust alone in Him who is 
"mighty to save" — why may he not freely rejoice, 
nay exult with joy unutterable, in the prospect of a 
blissful immortality near at hand ; — seeing that the 
very condition of this joy is an always proportionate 
depth of those convictions which render him serious 
in temper, sedulous in duty, and keenly apprehensive 
of the divine displeasure ? 

It is on this very ground that we reject, as equally 
unchristian and unphilosophical, those sombre inter- 
pretations of Christianity which aim to secure serious- 
ness of temper, assiduity in good works, and a 
necessary dread of the Divine Majesty, not by a 
balance of counteractive motives; but by giving an 
almost unlimited operation to motives of one order, 
and these of the kind which, when uncorrected, 
crush and vilify the moral sentiments. 

But do facts bear us out in advancing these broad 
affirmations? Let us select our genuine instances, 
and we say they do. Wherever evangelic doctrines 
are indeed entertained with an unfeigned belief of 
their reality, there the product is not a lax, presump- 
tuous religionism ; but a humble, and yet happy piety, 
and a consistent virtue. 

But need we say that a loose and heartless evan- 
gelic faith may, in a moral point of view, be of far 
less value than is a cordially professed superstition ? 
The vast intrinsic difference between genuine Chris- 
tianity, and the austere illusions which are now 



CHRISTIANITY. 



107 



supplanting it, is much obscured by this circumstance. 
The grave puritanism (may we so apply the term ?) 
which fascinates so many ardent minds, is, although 
it dates itself from a remote age, in this age quite 
new, and it possesses all that freshness and animation 
which is characteristic of a recent religious impulse ; 
or, as we might take the liberty to call it, of a 
*^ revival." 

Meantime the evangelic principle had, at the 
moment of the birth of its antagonist, spent itself ; 
or had become in a degree languid. Its in- 
terior force had been dissipated by many and dis- 
tracting occupations — commendable in themselves, 
but not easily made to consist with profound senti- 
ments, of any kind. At the same time an almost 
unprecedented outburst of political and ecclesiasti- 
cal strife (must we not say of hatred ?) had pro- 
duced its inevitable — its own effects, in vitiating 
the religious sentiments of thousands, in all com- 
munions. 

At such a moment, an austere pietism, exempted 
from every admixture of vulgarity by issuing from 
hails of learning, and graced with the undefined (and 
alas ! unexamined) recommendations of antiquity, and 
offering to young and ambitious spirits a course of 
glory — if not heavenly, yet not earthly in the ordi- 
nary sense — such a system, thus graced, comes into 
comparison with what was already exhausted — divided 
— distracted — with what had ceased, for some long 
time, to be under the guidance of powerful and 
deeply moved minds. 



108 



ON SPIRITUAL 



The consequence was such as might have been 
supposed^ and such as has invariably resulted from 
similar oppositions of a spent energy, with an energy 
renovated. If at this moment there be reason to 
anticipate a better issue of this collision than the 
usual course of human affairs would warrant us in 
expecting, such a hope must be drawn, chiefly, from 
the now obvious fact, that the restorers of ^' Catholic" 
superstitions are, like many other leaders of sects, 
gifted with more zeal than discretion. 

But it will be demanded — what w^e mean by 
speaking of the evangelic principle as having been 
lately, or as still being, in a state of some exhaustion 
or collapse. 

Certainly not, that evangelical doctrine has ceased 
to be professed with explicitness, or taught scrip- 
turally. Certainly not, that it has so fallen into decay 
as to fail of producing its proper and happy effects in 
very many instances, and on all sides. Certainly not, 
that any dogmatic apostasy from the faith has taken 
place among us. 

On the contrary, it should be acknowledged with 
gratitude, that those frightful delusions which were 
the fruit of an absurd system of metaphysics, more 
absurdly applied to the simplicity of scripture, and 
which at one time extensively disgraced evangelic 
communions, have nearly disappeared ; and that, partly 
as scattered by argument, partly as extinguished by 
their own fumes, these false fires are almost gone out. 

What then do we complain of? not of False 
Doctrine ;- — but rather of faintness at the heart ; as a 



'•t 



CHRISTIANITY, 



109 



man may be labouring under no assignable malady, 
whose pulse yet is feeble, whose appetite is wayward, 
whose waking hours are listless, and whose repose is 
unquiet. 

If it be our part to speak of Spiritual Christianity, 
w^e are bound to take its characteristics as we find 
them in the apostolic writings; — not as they may 
happen to be presented to the eye in the momentary 
aspects of this or that favoured religious body. 
What does impartiality mean, if, w^hile loudly de- 
nouncing superstition, or any other antichristian 
error ; we allow it, by our discreet silence and deli- 
cate reserve, to be gathered, that the body from the 
bosom of which we are supposed to come is, in our 
esteem, no sharer in those ever changing alternations 
of health and sickness which attach to whatever is 
human ! 

Good reason is there to hope that, after the now 
spreading "Catholic" puritanism shall have freely 
exhibited its inner qualities, and shall have honestly 
avowed its ulterior purposes, the deep movement of 
which it has been the immediate cause, may, through 
the divine goodness, take a happier course, and ex- 
tensively promote genuine piety. 

"It is not in man that walketh to direct his 
steps ;" — and certainly there does not belong to the 
religious commonwealth any such individual direc- 
tive wisdom as might avail for the conduct of the 
whole, in its dubious progress toward truth and 
virtue. This overruling power it is not in man to 
exercise. Our part is, while humbly we implore 



110 ON SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY. 



this divine governance of the church, meekly to 
yield ourselves to it, v^hen personally challenged to 
surrender our prejudices or to forego our preferences, 
or to make any other sacrifice, which may give 
evidence of our love of the Truth." 



THE 

THIRD LECTURE- 



ON THE ETHICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SPIRITUAL 
CHRISTIANITY. 



THE THIRD LECTURE. 



We are now to speak of the ethical characteristics 
of Spiritual Christianity ; or of the influence which 
the great truths afl3.rmed to constitute evangelic 
doctrine should, and do exert over the dispositions 
and conduct of those who cordially embrace them. 

But whence are we to derive our knowledge of 
what this influence actually is ? Is it to be drawn 
inductively, from observation of facts around us ; or 
hypothetically, from a consideration of what ought to 
be the moral efficiency of such truths ? 

We reply that we should adopt either method 
without fear as to the result. Nevertheless the first, 
namely, that of an appeal to the actual and visible 
influence of the great principles of the Gospel, 
wherever they have been allowed fully to take effect, 
could not be rendered satisfactory, or be exempted 
from plausible objections, within any such limits 
as are prescribed to us in the present instance. 

Scarcely any subject, connected with religion, 
can be named, of wider compass than would be a 
thoroughly impartial and comprehensive inquiry as 



114 



ON SPIRITUAL 



to the actual efficiency of evangelic principles, as 
they have been maintained in this, and other countries. 
If we do not go into such an inquiry, it is not from 
hesitation as to the issue; nor merely from a regard 
to our limits ; but still more from a decisive unwill- 
ingness to affirm, without the adduction of ample 
proof, even those things of which we have the most 
entire persuasion, and the truth of which long obser- 
vation has confirmed. 

In taking however the other method — namely, that 
of inferring the proper moral operation of certain 
religious truths from their manifest tendency, we do 
not intend in any instance, to draw inferences not 
sustained, as we fully believe, by sufficient evidence ; 
much less to assume in theory what is contradicted 
in fact.^. 

This method moveover, is warranted by the 
belief which, as we think, the entire course of human 
affairs, within the circle of church history, suggests, 
or which it impels us to adopt, that the religion of 
Christ, destined as it is to bless the human family 
through a far extended period, ought to be con- 
sidered as now, in our times, preparing itself for a 
development of its powers, proportioned, at once, to 
the wide extent, and to the long continuance of its 
ultimate triumph. The cycles of the Gospel have 
been slow in their revolutions, because the entire 
period of its history on earth is of incalculable 
extent. 

How then do such views bear upon our present 
subject ? — Just as the breaking of the morning affects 



CHRISTIANITY. 



115 



the movements of those who, in painful anxiety, 
have watched through the night. While thus there- 
fore considering what is, and should be, the moral 
influence of the Gospel, we are, in this sense, for- 
getting the things that are behind, and reaching for- 
w^ard to those that are before." We are not thinking 
of the struggles of that which is expiring; but of 
that which is even now coming to the birth. 

We are then to confine our view of Christianity to 
that aspect of it in which it presents itself as a power, 
adapted to the reformation of the human family ; or 
its restoration, universally, to a condition of purity, 
brotherly affection, and rectitude ; and to so much 
happiness as the prevalence of truth and love must 
ensure. 

That the religion of Christ was framed with the 
intention of bringing about such a restitution of the 
social system, and that it is actually advancing toward 
the accomplishment of that end, will, as we think, 
convincingly appear if we look to two or three special 
instances, in which what it has actually effected 
affords ground of hope for its further triumphs. 

It is certain that while the New Testament con- 
tains, scattered over its surface, the definite articles 
of a perfect system of ethics, delivered in the form of 
precise precepts and prohibitions ; it contains more- 
over, and which are the secret of its power, vital 
principles, not always defined ; but which, as they 
are evolved, one after another, and are successively 
brought to bear upon the opinions and manners of 



116 



ON SPIRITUxiL 



christianized nations, do actually remove from them 
those flagrant evils which had accumulated in the 
course of time, and which, so long as they are pre- 
valent, abate very much the religious sensibilities 
even of those who are the most conscientious. 

Let it then be well observed that, while the 
conscience of the individual Christian — studious 
of his Bible, is informed and directed, and his con- 
duct is bound by explicit precepts, touching at all 
points the entire surface of his moral existence; 
these precepts are propounded always as exemplifica- 
tions of principles, supposed to reside in his bosom, 
as a Christian, and apart from which the mere pre- 
cept, even if rigorously respected, would leave him 
liable to the imputation of not fulfilling " the law of 
Christ." It must be so ; because Christianity is a 
spiritual religion; — a new life of the soul, manifest- 
ing itself, as occasion arises, in the outward be- 
haviour. 

But this is not all ; and it is at the present moment 
especially important to keep the further truth in 
mind, that the New Testament, considered as em- 
bodying a system of morals for the world — a system 
which is slowly to develop itself, until the human 
family has been led by it into the path of peace and 
purity, eflfects this great purpose, not by prohibiting, 
in so m.any words, the evils it is at length to abolish ; 
but by putting in movement unobtrusive impulses, 
which nothing, in the end, shall be able to withstand. 

It is in this manner that the gospel has already 
conquered for itself an ample territory of just and 



i 



CHRISTIANITY. 



117 



humane sentiments, on the field of the social system ; 
and it is thus that it is now, with an observable 
acceleration, going forth — conquering, and to con- 
quer. These conquests proceed even at times when 
Christian piety may not be in the most healthy state. 
We take an instance or two ; and those which we 
shall name will show that no hopes of reformation for 
the world, if clearly founded upon w^hat we may be 
sure is the ultimate moral intention of the Scriptures, 
ought to be regarded as chimerical ; and that, with a 
steady faith, we may look forward to w^hat would 
deserve to be called a golden age, so far as the uni- 
versal prevalence of Christian principles must bring 
about so happy a condition of the human family. 

To the Gospel, thus working reformation by the 
noiseless operation of its ethical principles, blessing 
us often unawares^ and even against the bent of our 
perverse wills — to the gospel. Woman owes every thing 
good; for she derives from it her power to bless 
indeed those whom she loves ; and thus to become 
herself happy. Acknowledged as one in Christ," 
with man, and a sharer in the perils and dignities of 
personal responsibility to God, and a partner, without 
a shade of difference, in the hope of immortality, she 
takes a place never before granted to her. This 
religious equality is enough to ensure her welfare in 
every other sense ; and the formal precepts which 
guard the sanctities of domestic life stand forth indeed 
as law ; but are, in a manner, superseded by deeper 
forces, which work from within. The precept is the 
verbal expression of something more efficient, and of 



118 



ON SPIRITUAL 



wider application than itself. Polygamy — the curse 
of man, not only disappears, (and whether it be 
distinctly prohibited or not) but a broad foundation 
is laid for the choicest happiness which earth admits, 
that of the untainted domestic affections. If then a 
question could be seriously agitated as to the lawful- 
ness of polygamy, under the Christian system, it 
would properly be determined, not by searching for 
enactments, or statutes; but by considering whether 
the hopes and dignities of Christian piety be woman's 
right; for if they be, then is she no longer man's 
slave ; but his friend and companion on the road to 
heaven ; and as such, her pure affections are not to 
be outraged, or herself degraded. This instance 
exemplifies that occult, but efficacious process by 
which the religion of Christ brings about the reform 
of manners, more certainly than could be done by 
prohibitions. 

It was as opposed to the first principles of the 
Gospel — the gospel of mercy, that the sanguinary 
passion for the shameless murders of the public games 
gave way. The Apostles, in their circuits through 
the Roman world, had everywhere witnessed these 
horrors ; and yet they did not, as angry reformers would 
undoubtedly have done, openly inveigh against them ; 
nor did they explicitly forbid Christians to take part 
in them. But they taught humanity on principles so 
deep and wide, as to ensure, at length, the removal 
of these atrocities, wherever the Gospel should come 
to be respected by the government of any country. 

Or we may take the very significant instance of 



CHRISTIANITY. 



119 



slavery — that horrid usage — backed by a worse doc- 
trine — slavery, w^hich at this moment is cursing the 
world, less even by the miseries it immediately en- 
tails, than by causing, as it does, a blockage on that 
high road whereon mercy and truth for all nations 
are ready to make their triumphant progress. 

The present patrons of this enormity please them- 
selves in affirming, what is indeed true, that neither 
Christ nor his Apostles explicitly forbid it. They 
do not ; — but they have done more than forbid 
it ; for they have challenged the slave as man, 
and have taught him that his soul can neither be 
bought nor sold. Only leave this doctrine to take its 
effect, and it will, in its season, emancipate his body. 
Christ, moreover, has taught men to cherish and to 
respect each other as brethren. But will slavery 
consist with the universal acceptance of any such 
royal law of love ? It will not. Christianity and 
slavery, when the former comes to rule the world, 
will not endure each other : the one must expel and 
destroy the other ; for they v/ork, not merely from 
different, but from antagonist principles : — the one is 
fatal to the other ; and that one which cannot die, 
must ere long slay its rival. 

This signal instance is the more pertinent to our 
immediate argument, inasmuch as it is now, on a 
large scale, and under circumstances of unusual ex- 
citement, displaying this very characteristic of Chris- 
tian ethics, to effect an ulterior beneficent intention 
by the efficacy of its principles, more than by the 
force of its precepts. Moreover it is to be observed. 



120 



ON SPIRITUAL 



that while the evil against which the Gospel is thus 
directing its silent irresistible energy, is of the highest 
enormity, the absence of express prohibitions on the 
subject, and the apparent sanction of an implicit 
approval, give the bolder relief to the doctrine w^e 
are illustrating. For in this instance it is seen, that, 
notwithstanding the ambiguity or silence of the 
Christian code, touching slavery, and notwithstanding 
the fact of its having given its influence more ex- 
plicitly to strengthen the principle of patient endur- 
ance in the slave, than to inculcate upon the master 
the duty of releasing his bondman ; — that yet the 
deep-working principle of Christianity — its force of 
love, as it slowly develops itself, and becomes better 
understood, and takes a firmer hold of all minds, and 
raises the standard of humane feeling, must render 
slavery every year less and less tolerable, within 
christianized communities — must at length expel it 
from the bosom of civilization — must drive it further 
and farther outward into the wilds of society, and leave 
it, seen and confessed as such, a sheer curse, resting 
upon the heads and homes of its infatuated supporters; 
and at length bring it to be denounced, by all but 
savages, as a nuisance in the world — a nuisance in- 
sufferable, to be swept away at w^hatever risk. 

A parallel instance of the gradual efficacy of the 
Christian ethics in removing inveterate evils by the 
slow expansion of principles, rather than by express 
prohibitions, is that of War. The amiable friends of 
universal peace seem, although diametrically opposed 
in every thing to the upholders of slavery, yet to 



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have fallen into a similar misapprehension of the 
spirit of the Christian code. For while the apologists 
of slavery are looking into the New Testament for 
what may serve to palliate their horrid doctrine, in 
the way of apparent connivance, the friends of Peace 
are searching for that which, we presume, they will 
not find — direct prohibitions of war; although they 
may easily find that which must, in its season, and 
perhaps at no very remote period, relieve the world 
of this scourge, and for ever. Let but a Christian 
feeling pervade, even if it w^ere only three powerful 
communities of the civilized world — and there would 
be no more war, in any corner of it. 

Now in any instance in which the patrons of prescrip- 
tive evils run to the Scriptures to find either precedent 
for them, or the absence of formal prohibitions, they 
might be told, not merely that, in taking such a part, 
they show themselves to be destitute of " the mind 
that was in Christ but that they totally misunder- 
stand the very structure of the Christian system, as an 
ethical code, and which we are bound to resrard alwavs 
in its power and purport, rather than in its prohibi- 
tions; and especially when we have to do with immoral 
usages peculiar to countries, or to times. The re- 
provers of such usages should therefore be peculiarly 
careful not to stake a good cause upon the interpre- 
tation of single texts ; but should rather bend their 
utmost endeavours to the work of promulgating, in 
the purest form, those first truths before which 
nothing that is malign, unjust, or impure, will be 
able to stand. It is a circumstance deserving to be 

G 



122 



ON SPIRITUAL 



noticed, that those who have the most signaHzed their 
zeal in opposition to special evils^ have not often 
been remarkable for their cordial regard to the great 
truths of the Gospel. 

This practical error, so often fallen into by Chris- 
tian philanthropists, unfortunately gives countenance, 
indirectly, to the course pursued by men of an oppo- 
site temper, who, in quoting Scripture (as Satan 
quotes it) in defence of impiety and wrong, plant 
the Gospel, in the Gospel's own path ; and doubly 
obstruct its triumphant progress, first, by upholding 
what is wicked ; and then by loading Christianity 
with the disgrace of seeming to support it. 

Let the Gospel, in its genuine energy, pervade a 
community, and each ancient abuse that attaches to it, 
will come, in its turn, to be questioned and rebuked, 
and will at length yield to this sovereign influence. 
We confide too little in the heavenly eflicacy of Chris- 
tian principles, when we labour to effect reformations 
on the lower ground of utility, or of a temporizing 
expediency. 

And yet even when argued on these lower grounds, 
the purity of the Christian ethics seldom fails to win 
a triumph. Some old injustice — some immemorial 
wrong, which has worked as a canker within the social 
system, is at length brought under notice. This in- 
terference of " busy zeal" is at first hotly resented. 
The originators of the protest look again to the 
grounds of their objection, and strengthen their 
argument. The reasons they advance compel atten- 
tion, and are examined, and then the entire code of 



CHRISTIANITY. 



123 



Christian ethics, as applicable to the evil in question, 
is brought to bear upon it. The result, whether it 
be more or less definite, and even if the first protest 
be overruled, is to raise the tone of moral feeling, 
throughout the community, and to bring the rule of 
morals into closer contact v^ith the consciences of all 
who are sincere in their Christian profession. The 
Gospel of Christ has thus won another triumph, in 
preparation for that which shall be universal ; and to 
the eye of an intelligent observer these successive 
evolutions of Christian morality, are clearly predictive 
of such a triumph. 

If Christianity be yet upheld in its purity ; and if 
it be permitted to work its way forward, a time must 
come, when the acceleration of its progress shall 
attract all eyes, and shall begin to date its periodic 
advances, not by centuries, but by years ; or even by 
months and days. The world is governed, less by 
the direct influence of known and fixed truths, than 
by variable feeling, reverberated from all sides ; just 
as the temperature of the atmosphere is maintained, 
not by the full sunshine, but by the radiation of 
heat from all surfaces on earth. Men individually — 
or at least those who are open to moral influence at 
all, act in a manner which represents, not their indi- 
vidual acquaintance with what is right, but that 
difiused sense of right which a few, who intensely feel 
it, have shed around them. 

Thus it is that every powerful impulse communi- 
cated to the social mass by energetic minds reproduces 
itself, until even the few almost lose their distinction 

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124 



ON SPIRITUAL 



of feeling more than others, and of thinking more 
justly ; because they have brought the many to think 
and feel with them. This has happened several times 
v^ithin the last fifty years. 

How much soever there may be still to lament in 
the moral condition of this country ; yet those who 
are able to recall, with distinctness, the state of 
opinion, of feeling, and of manners, in particular re- 
spects, about the close of the last century, must 
acknowledge that great progress has been made, if 
not in reforming the mass of the people, yet in 
bringing better modes of thinking, and purer and more 
humane sentiments into credit, and in securing 
for them an undisputed influence. Much has been 
done within the compass of forty years, having the 
aspect of a preparatory work, and the full effect of 
v^hich may be expected to appear, like the sudden 
verdure and fertility of a northern summer, at the 
moment when a new promulgation of great truths 
— an uncontradicted expansion of evangelic doctrine, 
shall throw fresh life into the Christian body. 

The grievous evils which affect the mass of the 
people — their ignorance, recklessness, and misery, 
have so been made the subjects of anxious con- 
sideration of late, and have so, in their frightful 
details been explored, and attested, and so mea- 
sured in their vast extent, and so spread to view in 
their particulars, that, without an hour's delay, the 
remedy would be applied, and the true means of 
renovation zealously employed, were but the middle 
and upper classes — through the Divine mercy — to 



CHRISTIANITY. 



125 



awake to a Christian feeling in this behalf. May we 
assume that the preparation foreshows such an 
awakening to be at hand ? 

The contributions, labours, sacrifices, demanded 
by a Christian care of the mass of the people, and 
which it must seem extravagant to expect, while 
whatever is needed for such purposes is to be wrung, 
by the importunities of a few, from the indifference 
or reluctance of the many — such aids would flow in 
as a mighty river, if an accordant evangelic feeling 
were to spread itself among those who already come 
within the influence of Christian instruction. Great 
truths once recognised cordially by a christianized 
community, and then, the ardent benevolence which 
lately was the distinction of those who are benevolent 
by constitution, becomes the common sentiment of 
many ; and a generous glow of charity, which had 
appeared like a hectic spot, now gives the colour of 
florid health to the social body. Sentiments of justice 
and kindness (hardly to be distinguished when both 
are vivid) kindling from heart to heart, and lit up 
by interchanged sympathies, whatever is well proved 
to be just, kind, and reasonable is borne forward, as 
by a tide ; whereas, while the mass of society is 
stagnant, things good and just, if carried at all, are 
carried as by the force of a hurricane ; and in such 
instances, although the triumph of humanity is joy- 
fully hailed, the result disappoints the hopes it had 
excited. 

When not springing from great truths — and 
therefore not truly Christian in principle, the best- 



126 



ON SPIRITUAL 



intended reforms of morals have not merely failed of 
effecting their object ; but have brought upon society 
the most terrible reactions; as if to compensate the 
Patron of evil for some temporary restraints, by a 
wild outbreak of licentiousness, not to be repressed 
in a century ! 

This, in fact, has been the melancholy story, again 
and again, of attempted reformations in morals, 
through the successive periods of Christian history ; 
and surely this mass of experiments, prompted often 
by benevolence, but unv^isely contrived, and unhap- 
pily concluded, should avail to teach some caution to 
those v^ho are zealously labouring to effect the sup- 
pression of flagrant evils by factitious means ; or if 
by means lawful, yet not in accordance with the first 
principle of Christianity, considered as a scheme of 
ethics. Christian morality knows nothing of reforms 
that do not spring from an inner impulse — even the 
impulse of a Christian faith ; nor admits such as are 
imposed by a power acting upon the surface of human 
nature, and working on toward the centre. 

There is too much reason to fear that, when Chris- 
tian energies are set to work in this introverted 
direction, which is not proper to them, the mischief 
intended to be removed, is pent up only, and gathers 
both heat and expansive force during its short season 
of compression, which shall teach us our error by the 
tremendous impetuosity of its explosion. 

As on the present occasion we at once challenge 
entire independence, and disdain every ambiguity, we 
cannot do less than plainly express the opinion that 



CHRISTIANITY. 



127 



the benevolent, and no doubt greatly successful endea- 
vours now making to repress the use of intoxicating 
liquors — we must not say to promote temperance ; 
for temperance is altogether another matter — these 
endeavours, involving pleas and pretexts which 
common sense resents, might well bear to be 
seriously reconsidered ; and placed on a basis of 
principles truly and distinctively Christian. 

Two courses are highly dangerous in morals ; 
nay, we must say, are of fatal tendency, and are 
sure to turn virtue back upon itself, with loss 
and discredit. The first is to teach men, either 
directly, or by a clear implication, that it is vain for 
them, such as they are, to hope to become virtuous, 
or to control their passions, with a uniform and 
religious governance of the lower nature by the 
higher. The second error is to suggest to them the 
belief, or to teach it, that they may become virtuous 
on some other than the highest principles. 

The first error promotes the sordid ethics of 
interest or expediency ; the real meaning of which is, 
that, if a man can but by any dexterity evade ill 
consequences to himself, it matters nothing whether 
his bosom be the residence of an ansfel, or the cao-e 
of seven demons. 

The second of these errors, should it pervade a 
community, would have the effect, if we might use 
the figure, of bleeding Truth to death ; for it would 
bring about such a contempt of principle, as must 
end in leaving society to be governed by the 
most frivolous of all motives — those of conventional 



128 



ON SPIRITUAL 



decency — courtesy, heartless honour, and a varnished 
selfishness. 

But Christianity, as a system of morals, while it 
rejects any partial and interested concession to 
virtue, implying disaffection to virtue's self, and 
commands every man to be religiously virtuous^ 
not factitiously abstinent ; opens to all the means 
of becoming so, by surrendering themselves to 
its own efiicacious truths. Not only is a conven- 
tional or arbitrary morality incomplete, as compared 
wdth Christian morality ; for it is unlawful — it is pro- 
hibited — it is condemned, as an insult, at once to the 
Law, and to the Mercy of Heaven. 

Here then we make our stand in behalf of Spiri- 
tual Christianity, considered as a means of producing 
genuine virtue ; and we afiirm this to be its first 
characteristic — That it attaches a sovereign 

IMPORTANCE TO TrUTH, AS FURNISHING THE ONLY 
SOLID SUPPORT FOR THE MOTIVES OF SELF-GOVERN- 
MENT, PURITY, AND CHARITY. 

Every other notion of Christianity — every scheme 
of piety and virtue which we must think ourselves 
bound to except against as unchristian, or as Chris- 
tian only in a mutilated sense, has either presented a 
lifeless body of precepts and prohibitions ; or, if it 
has rested upon motives and principles, these have 
not been those of the Gospel, which are at once 
deep, serious, and happy. There have been systems 
of morality, called Christian, some of them indulgent, 
and gay in their aspect ; and others austere ; but 
Christian morality, springing as it does from its 



CHRISTIANITY. 



129 



own truths, is at once far more profound than the 
severe scheme, and far more happy than the lax and 
frivolous scheme. 

But at this point an acknowledgment must be 
made which is due to the thorough impartiality we 
profess. When we speak, as we are compelled to 
do, of two parties, now ostensibly opposed, one to 
the other ; — the one promoting what we cannot but 
condemn as superstitious, and deficient in evan- 
gelic feeling ; and the other party, as maintaining 
evangelic principles of the highest importance ; it 
must by no means be thence inferred that we mean 
to represent the one party as altogether to be repro- 
bated, and the other party, as altogether to be 
approved, in matters of Christian practice. Truth 
and virtue, we do not hold to be chartered to com- 
panies : they are possessed only in part by those 
who possess the most of them ; and they are pos- 
sessed in some good measure, even by many who 
must yet stand condemned as capitally wrong in 
theology. 

Men, serious and upright, cannot easily be thought 
altogether to have failed while labouring to give 
prominence to some one element of Christian virtue, 
vrhich their opponents may have too little regarded ; 
and concerning which these, their opponents, might 
do well to take lessons at their lips. 

It is so, as we presume, in the great controversy 
whicb now agitates the Church. Assuredly we 
believe the revivers of the mongrel divinity, and 
dangerous practices of the ancient church, to be 

G 3 



130 



ON SPIHTTUAL 



pursuing a course in the last degree pernicious; and 
so far, those who oppose them in this endeavour are 
performing an urgent and important duty, and in the 
discharge of which we could only wish them success. 
Yet should it be regarded as an ominous triumph, 
even of evangelic principles, if they were so to prevail 
as to drive the chariot of controversial war over the 
field, at once crushing their antagonists, and demo- 
lishing what these may have done in refreshing par- 
ticular branches of Christian morality. Rather let us 
put on a Christian humility, and be sincerely willing 
to learn, even from those whom we strenuously 
oppose, to think anew of whatsoever things are 
pure, grave, seemly, just, and of good report : — 
whatsoever things give evidence of self-command, 
self-renunciation, stern assiduity, and patient endur- 
ance of evil. 

While devoutly desiring to see the corruptions of 
the ancient church warded off from the protestant 
pale, far should we be from desiring to witness, either 
the personal discomfiture, or disparagement of the 
restorers of these errors ; or such a reckless extinction 
of their endeavours as should leave room for no 
salutary reaction to take effect upon evangelic bodies. 
Such a corrective infiuence, it ought to be acknow- 
ledged, has long been greatly needed ; and should be 
welcomed as seasonable. 

A willingness to receive correction in matters 
of Christian morality from our theological oppo- 
nents, may well be founded upon a consideration 
of the fact, that, while the unhappy divisions which 



CHRISTIANITY. 



131 



distract the Christian commonwealth are in part 
redeemed by their tendency to preserve, and to give 
the greater accuracy to dogmatic principles, they 
have a most unhappy influence, as well in diverting 
the minds of Christian men from the simple and well 
understood elements of morality, as in lowering, on 
all sides, the due impression of the sacred importance 
of these simple elements. Not only are our thoughts 
so much distracted by controversy that we become 
far too little mindful of the tempers and virtues which 
should recommend a Christian profession ; but the 
solemn sanctions of morality lose their influence 
over our minds. We become more eager than 
conscientious — more acute than sincere, and more 
zealous than holy. 

Whoever comes forward therefore, to renovate any 
one branch of Christian ethics, even though it be on 
defective principles, should meekly be listened to, and 
the movement which he originates should be considered, 
so far as it may extend, as if it were — which it may in 
fact be, an admonition from the Lord, calling upon 
all to do their first works," and to repent of any 
remissness, or unfaithfulness, with which they may 
be chargeable. 

It is trite to say that, while the human mind con- 
tinues what it is, men must differ, not merely in taste 
and intellectual preferences, but even in some of those 
matters of belief which should be under the control of 
mere reason : the supposition of an age of uniformity 
is therefore chimerical ; but the supposition — nay, 
the positive hope of an age of Christian concord, and 



132 



ON SPIRITUAL 



of cordial combination is not chimerical; for it is 
identical with the belief of the truth of Christianity 
itself, and of its triumph in the world. 

But when this era of Christian harmony commences, 
and w^hen Christian men become ^' of one mind, and 
of one heart," there will take place, as we cannot 
doubt, a surprising reflux of feeling toward the great 
matters of morality. The serious obligations of jus- 
tice, temperance, purity, and charity, will then be felt 
in another manner ; and will come home to the con- 
science, not merely as realities , but almost as novelties ; 
and Christian men will be fain to think that, here- 
tofore, they have been dreaming. 

Ever must it be true that Christian virtue is the 
direct product of Christian Truths ; but then, when 
these are no longer held in agitation, they will take 
their effect, and produce their fruits, with an abun- 
dance not heretofore imagined. More than two or 
three passages of Scripture, bearing upon the exact 
retributions of a future life, might be referred to, 
which hitherto have, in a manner, slept on the sacred 
page ; while eager controversies on points less nearly 
connected with our welfare, have engaged all atten- 
tion. It cannot be doubted that these ominous 
intimations are to have their turn, and to take the 
place due to them in the minds of Christians. 
When thus regarded. Christian morals may assume 
almost a new aspect. 

That we have not misunderstood the Christian 
morality, as intended to work its effects by the latent 



CHRISTIANITY. 



133 



operation of great principles rather than by the force 
of precepts and prohibitions, appears from the 
remarkable quality of our Lord's method of teaching 
morals — namely, that of enouncing principles of 
conduct in such a form as absolutely to exclude the 
supposition that he intended to deliver positive 
enactments. 

In each instance some principle of his divine 
morality is presented to us, so stated or so exem- 
plified, as that it can be available for our guidance, 
only as illustrating a principle ; and so as to imply 
what would be incompatible with other precepts, or 
even plainly immoral, if it were understood in any 
other manner. Unless a man hate his father and 
his mother, he cannot," says Christ, be my disciple." 
Who can for a moment imagine that this, and many 
similar injunctions, are positive laws, or statutes 
absolute ? As well give a literal import to his in- 
junction to eat his flesh, and drink his blood." 

If it were objected that^ in 'thus reading our Lord's 
system of morals, we are lowering the import of his 
commands, we reply that we are not lowering, but 
rather heightening it ; for we give these precepts a far 
more comprehensive interpretation, by this means ; 
and send them in upon the centre of the moral facul- 
ties — upon the conscience, instead of leaving them to 
rankle, as otherwise they must do, upon the surface, 
where they can effect no good. 

In all sincerity, and inasmuch as, without intending 
offence to any, we must allow our argument to take 
effect where it may, we should here advert to that 



134 



ON SPIRITUAL 



error in ethics which has been the besetting fault of 
many seriously-minded persons, in every age ; — we 
mean that of frittering down the evangelic prin- 
ciples of morality, into specific precepts, which, in 
that form, are either impracticable, or frivolous. 
What is the consequence? Thus understood — 
or rather, misunderstood, the law of Christ is made 
to stand opposed, not to the bad customs of the 
world, but to the very constitution of society ; and is 
made to forbid, with equal sternness, what is in- 
different or innocent, and what is unquestionably 
vicious. But nothing tends so certainly to merge the 
distinction between good and evil, as to prohibit 
things indifferent, or apparently so, with a Draco's 
severity. In truth this method of literally inter- 
preting our Lord's moral discourses, offers to the 
world so grotesque a portraiture of Christianity, that 
it is likely to be regarded as nothing better than 
a system of punctilious scrupulosities, and frivolous 
evasions. 

"The words that I speak unto you," said our 
Lord, "are spirit and truth." And have not all 
facts established his conclusion — that "the letter 
indeed killeth, but the spirit giveth life ;" for in every 
case in which men of an ardent and serious temper 
have taken up the letter instead of the spirit of Chris- 
tian morality, they themselves, or their immediate 
successors, have fallen, as we might say, lifeless, into 
the arms of formality; — each generation becoming 
more and more forgetful of vital truths. 



/ 



CHRISTIANITY 



135 



But now, if Christianity, as a scheme of morals, is 
intended to produce its effect rather by principles 
than precepts, we reach our second position ; namely, 
that it does so by its oneness of principle ; or its 
CONCENTRATION OF MOTIVES. Christian morality is 
an emanation — not from two or more centres, but 
from one. 

Is it not a fact, well understood in the philosophy 
of human nature, that, wherever we find a high 
degree of moral energy, of any kind, and whether it 
be good or evil in itself, it is always the energy of 
concentration ? Force, in conduct and character, 
whether it be benevolent or malignant, is the force 
of Unity, or the sovereignty of a single motive, or of 
a balance of motives, well combined. True is it in 
morals, that ^^a double-minded man" — a man acting, 
now from the impulse of one motive, now from that 
of another — is unstable in all his ways " — easily 
diverted from his path, or as easily overthrown upon 
it. Ought we not therefore to look for this same 
concentration in the morality of Christ ? If it is to 
be full of force — if it is to be a principle of power, 
and equal to the services and sacrifices of the Chris- 
tian life, it must possess this characteristic. 

What remains then is to seek the true centre of 
Christian morals ; — to find its law of concentration. 
Having found it, we shall do better to leave it full in 
view, and boldly expressed in a few words, than to 
dilate it in a lengthened discussion. This then must 
be the characteristic of Christian morality — That it 
springs all from one centre ; and that centre the same 



136 



ON SPIRITUAL 



which is the centre of all light and warmth in the 
scheme of Christian doctrine. 

If indeed man be capable of generous and happy- 
emotions, and if it be only when acting under the 
influence of such emotions that he puts forth what- 
ever energy his individual constitution may admit of, 
then it is certain that no principle of duty which does 
not deeply touch the emotions of love and gratitude, 
can become a principle of concentration, or be of 
avail to bring forth the entire power of the character. 

It is thus that a generous motive, ruling the mind, 
even if it be a very faulty one, and liable perhaps to 
the condemnation of the moralist, nevertheless is 
found to carry men further in arduous and perilous 
services than they are ever carried by a mere sense 
of duty. What sort of virtue is that which springs 
from, and is always regulated by a calculation of 
consequences, turning in upon the man's insulated 
welfare — or upon what he supposes to be his welfare? 
This is not morality — but arithmetic. Nor do we 
hesitate to affirm that a community would have more 
to fear, in which such a principle were to prevail, and 
to be openly and generally recognised and formally 
taught, than one in which morals were actually at a 
very low ebb, while yet the true principle of virtue 
was in theory admitted ; for it is clearly better that 
men should still be men, even though bad, than that 
they should have become mere automatons of self- 
ishness. 

There may be other, and loftier motives of 
virtue, less to be condemned than the atheistic 



CHRISTIANITY. 



137 



doctrine of expediency, and which may in fact go far 
in carrying men through the duties of common life 
unblamably ; but, failing in warmth and animation, 
and not so springing from the centre of the moral 
faculties as to embrace and harmonize its emotions, 
they are little to be accounted of; — they are morali- 
ties, not virtue ; for virtue is one ; nor can it be such, 
if it allow any principal element of our nature to 
remain in a dormant condition, or if it repress the 
free exercise of any. 

The Truths, which in the preceding Lecture were 
affirmed to be of the very substance of Christianity, 
being assumed as certain, how can they be regarded 
otherwise than as the ground or reason of the motives 
of Christian morality ?— they must, if they are be- 
lieved to be true. Can they be cordially admitted, 
and yet take any other position than the highest in 
our regard, or affect us in any other than the most 
sovereign manner ? 

Christian virtue then, can be nothing less than 
a concentrated love, or devotion of the soul to the 
service of Him to whom we owe, not natural life 
merely, but spiritual life. Christian morality is an 
affectionate loyalty to Him who, besides that He is 
our rightful sovereign, has acquired every claim to 
our duty and affection by having exchanged positions 
with us, when we were without help," and under 
condemnation. 

Unless we had been guilty and helpless, no such 
intervention as that which the Christian scheme 
supposes, could have had place. But if the ruin 



138 



ON SPIRITUAL 



of man, and his recovery by the personal interven- 
tion of the divine Saviour be both true, then must 
it be granted that thenceforward genuine Chris- 
tian virtue, while it is deepened and chastised by a 
recollection of the misery whence we have been 
rescued, is warmed, and receives a boundless impulse 
from an affection, directed with the distinctness of 
personal love, toward the Saviour, and who is now 
become, by every title, the sovereign of the heart. 

By the most direct inference, the one motive of 
affectionate loyalty, and a humble expectation of 
winning the approval of Him who is Supreme in our 
regards, must be held sufficient to sustain our con- 
stancy in any service, which that Sovereign is known 
to approve, or which we believe will be graciously 
accepted by Him at our hands. And not only ser- 
vices, but sufferings " for Christ's sake," even to 
the endurance of fiery trials, and death, have often, 
from the same motive, been stripped of their terrors. 

What more then can we need in behalf of the most 
comprehensive, or of the most refined scheme of 
morals, than is fully secured by this motive of 
loyalty to a sovereign — such as is the Saviour of the 
world ? 

From the evangelic history is drawn the Idea of all 
that is beautiful in virtue; and from the preceptive 
parts of the Scriptures the explicit rules of morality; 
and from the doctrinal parts, the impulsive principle of 
affectionate obedience. With a system of ethics, 
itself faultless as a definite rule, may it not be 
affirmed, that a loving loyalty to such a sovereign, at 



CHRISTIANITY. 



139 



once Teacher and Saviour, embraces every motive 
that can tend to secure a correspondent moral har- 
mony and completeness, in the conduct and temper 
of his subjects and disciples ? The Christian ethics, 
thus made to relate to the personal character and 
v^ill of Christ, has in a high degree that concentra- 
tion and oneness of motive, which is needed to give 
force and simplicity to virtue. A generous anima- 
tion, and a tender affection, a v^ell defined personal 
sentiment, fixed on one whose own moral elevation 
leaves nothing that is great, pure, or beautiful, to be 
added to it or even imagined, give to Christian mora- 
lity a power and warmth, to which no other system 
makes any approach. 

The simplest possible test may be applied to the 
motive and rule of Christian morality as thus stated. 
Let any one, after furnishing his mind with a distinct 
conception of the personal character of Christ, compel 
himself tobringhis own conduct, dispositions, and con- 
verse, throughout any one day, to this gauge, namely, 
its supposed conformity, in principle, with what we 
may call the style of our Lord's behaviour. This cri- 
terion will be found to reach to the extent of the most 
arduous and unusual duties, as well as to fit the most 
ordinary. If we are compelled to grant that the 
application of such a test would carry us forward 
always toward whatever is pure, and just, and kind, 
have we not virtually granted that Christianity^ is 
divine ? 

What then remains is to give impulse to the 
rule we acknowledge to be good. And this must be 



140 



ON SPIRITUAL 



by admitting into the heart, in all its power, that faith 
which connects the soul with the Saviour, by the 
vital agency of the Spirit of grace. Then it is that 
abstract virtue becomes embodied, and lives. The 
office of the Holy Spirit, as we learn by the apo- 
stolic word is — to take of the things of Christ " — 
whatever is his distinctively, and " to reveal them to 
us." In other words, to expand the divine pattern of 
all perfection before our contracted faculties, part by 
part, as we are able to receive it ; — to convey to us 
the lesson of perfection, in morsels, and to render us, 
by a gradual process of assimilation, new creatures 
in Christ Jesus." 

But this office of the Holy Spirit has its own 
peculiar tendency to promote the purification of the 
heart. How impressive is the apostolic appeal to 
Christians, what ! know ye not that your bodies are 
the temples of the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in 
you ?" and again, the injunction not to grieve the 
Holy Spirit." It is when Christianity is spiritually 
understood, and when whatever tends to substitute 
symbols for realities is rejected, that a trinitarian 
faith is brought to bear with effect upon the under- 
standing, the heart and the life. If this faith be 
doubtingly or distrustfully held, is it any wonder that 
it is found to be ineffective ? or if it be held in con- 
junction with notions which either oppress the heart, 
or which favour the propensity to rest in formalities, 
then ought we to suppose it can exhibit its proper 
influence ? 

But we are speaking of a spiritual and cordial 



CHRISTIANITY. 



141 



trinitarian faith, and then we affirm it to be the 
basis of the only virtue which deserves the name — a 
serious, reverential, happy, and affectionate devotion 
of the whole nature to God the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Spirit. Christian virtue is the habit, 
the motive, and the act of the soul meditating upon 
the love of God," and the grace of the Lord 
Jesus," and enjoying " the communion of the Holy 
Spirit." 

Let it be remarked, that apostolic trinitarian doc- 
trine — so utterly unlike the crabbed definitions of a 
wrangling and unevangelic age, brings the inscrutable 
mystery of the divine nature to bear immediately 
upon the affections, under an aspect of pleasurable 
emotion. How little has this been regarded by angry 
disputants ! — How grievously have those misunder- 
stood apostolic orthodoxy, who have pursued each 
other to the death, because not consenting to the same 
jargon as themselves ! We cannot too attentively 
regard the apostolic method of teaching this great 
truth — of shedding it into the heart. Our Creed, 
if derived from the Scriptures, speaks to us of the 
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the love of 
God, and of the communion of the Holy Ghost." 
This is the orthodoxy which, when cordially enter- 
tained, impels Christians to love each other and 
all men, and to abound in good works, as sacrifices 
and ofierings, with which " God is well pleased." 

But it is reasonably asked — if such be the intensity 
and excellence of the motives which you affirm to 
spring from an evangelic faith, how do you explain 



142 



ON SPIRITUAL 



the frequent and lamentable instances in which those 
who adopt these motives, and talk of them per- 
petually, are found wanting in the first duties of 
morality, and guilty even of outraging its plainest 
requirements? Nothing is more simple: such per- 
sons, and the number of such is never small, and in 
times of formality or of controversial agitation, like 
the present, it will be large — such persons, unhappily, 
while they have surrendered their hold of the com- 
mon, or as they would term them, of the worldly 
and unevangelic motives of virtue, are very far from 
having come into any real communion with those 
motives of which they so fluently speak. They are 
in fact unprovided with any efficacious motives of 
conduct; and they fall, while those less doctrinally 
enlightened than themselves, stand : they are, in fact, 
the easiest of all the victims of temptation : — if the 
first assault upon virtue be repelled from fear of 
shame, or from mere habit; — the second, or the 
third, prevails over the feeble resistance of a morality 
which has no basis, and no vitality. But when we speak 
of the efiicacy of the principles of Christian morals, 
we must mean, assuredly, nothing less than the actual 
possession of that motive, which we afiirm to be the 
impulse of all virtue. A thousand instances of failure 
and delinquency, among the professors of evangelic 
principles, prove only that the profession was all that 
had been attained by the individual. 

It is manifest that a principle of morals so specific 
and peculiar as the one we have named, cannot exist 
in power apart from a clear recognition of that prime 



CHRISTIANITY. 



143 



truth of Christianity whence immediately it springs. 
Any doctrine, therefore, the tendency of which is to 
throw obscurity upon this first article of belief — Jus- 
tification through faith in the propitiatory work of 
Christ ; or any religious practice, the efiect of which 
is to mingle what is human with what is divine, in 
the matter of our acceptance with God, must operate, 
so far, to chill the religious afiections, and to bring 
Christian morality, in the same proportion, down to 
the level of that morality which is unchristian — 
whether philosophic, or superstitious. It is on this 
ground, therefore, that we claim, without hesitation, 
the ethical beauty of Christianity, as proper and 
peculiar to an evangelic faith ; because every element 
of Christian virtue bears relation to a correspondent 
element of Christian doctrine ; and whatever darkens 
the one, enfeebles the other. 

A motive of virtue, so far as it may be peculiar, will 
express itself in its own manner. The results of two 
motives, themselves difiering greatly, will not be the 
same. Now the Christian morality, specified as such 
in the New Testament, has this very peculiarity, 
which we should look for, if indeed its principle be 
the one we have named. Most remarkable is it, 
that though our Lord, before his having accom- 
plished the work of redemption, refers but incident- 
ally to the great evangelic truth which was to be 
ratified by his death and resurrection ; yet pre- 
cludes all misunderstanding as to the principle of 
the system of morals which he was giving to the 
world, by very clearly resting the validity or accept- 



144 



ON SPIRITUAL 



ableness of even the most ordinary act of kindness 
or humanity, on the fact of its having been performed 
from a motive of affection toward himself; and by 
declaring that he regards any want of sympathy 
toward his suffering members, in this peculiar light, 
as being an affront to himself. 

As is the principle of virtue, so are its expressions. 
All benevolence toward mankind at large, if it be 
Christian benevolence, is the love of man, for 
Christ's sake, even as of those who are redeemed 
by his precious blood. Can it be doubted then that 
the Christian's affection toward his Christian brethren 
must have the same peculiarity, and possess it in the 
most decisive manner ; or that any want of this 
specific affection, or any backwardness in the expres- 
sion of it, toward Christ's disciples, is a grave fault, 
a fault rendering very ambiguous, to say the best, 
our personal Christianity ? 

And now let us remember that although Chris- 
tianity be a religion of principles rather than of 
precepts — yet it has its precepts ; — it has a law — 
a law summarily containing all law — the royal law 
of love, and of love among Christians, as such. If 
any man love God, let him love his brother also." 

This is my command," said the Saviour — a com- 
mand given before his sufferings, and issued anew 
from his throne in the heavens, that ye love one 
another." 

He who abstained from prohibiting some things 
which we cannot doubt he intended to exclude from 
his church, and who left many things unsaid which 



CHRISTIANITY. 



145 



we are forward to put into his lips, He has said — 
That those who are wanting in love to their Christian 
brethren are not to be accounted his disciples. 

Under every code of law and system of morals, 
however well defined it may be in its principles, or 
skilfully expounded in its particular applications, 
occasions must frequently be presented, by the ever- 
varying aspects of human affairs, in which some single 
enactment seems to contravene another ; or in which 
a general principle of law^ is apparently intercepted 
in its operation by some positive prohibition. Now 
this being an inconvenience to which every in- 
stitution wherein man acts a part must be liable, 
a universal necessity arises for admitting a rule of 
adaptation, by the aid of which the social machine 
may be exempted from ruinous collisions of part with 
part. Such a rule must have respect to the manifest 
intention, or the spirit, of the code or institution, con- 
sidered as a whole ; or to the known and recorded 
mind of the legislator ; or to some broad principle of 
expediency. 

In any such instance it is to be assumed that some 
things are of supreme importance ; while some are 
important relatively only, or conditionally ; and that 
whatever comes under this latter description should 
give way, rather than that a sovereign axiom, or an 
absolute and wide-extending precept should be dis- 
honoured. 

The application of these unquestionable principles 
to the Christian Institute, and to the conduct of 
Christians, one toward another, is obvious. The law 

H 



146 



ON SPIRITUAL 



of Christ, which enjoins his followers first to love 
each other fervently, and without reserve or disguise ; 
and then to recognise each other as Christians, and to 
abide in communion one with another, is the most 
explicit of all his commands it is the law the most 
solemnly promulgated ; it is the law that is reiterated 
oftener than any other. — It is a law announced as a 
universal rule of the Christian institute ; and there- 
fore always to be respected, rather than any enact- 
ment, less comprehensive, which may at any time 
seem to clash with it. 

Moreover this law, not only of love, but of com- 
munion, or of visible fellowship, is declared to be the 
one CHARACTERISTIC of the Christian institute ; and 
submission to it is made the condition at once of 
Christ's promised presence with his church, and of 
the conversion of the world by the means of the 
church. 

Ought not those then to look well to the course 
they are pursuing, who, on the plea of a conscientious 
regard to some special enactment, or of their adhe- 
rence to some institution which, at the most, is but a 
means to an end, are, and in a deliberate manner, 
putting contempt upon Christ's first Law — his uni- 
versal and sovereign will ; and on such ground are 
either refusing to recognise and to consort with other 
Christians; or are even denying the very name to 
those whose only alleged fault is their error (if it be 
an error) on the particular in question ? 

Whoever it is that pursues such a course, we 
cannot hesitate to speak of it as in the highest degree 



CHRISTIANITY. 



147 



culpable and perilous. It is the fault of these, our 
times; — a fault from which, however, multitudes of 
Christians individually stand clear, by the warmth 
and expansiveness of their personal sentiments, and 
the (genuine) liberality of their modes of action. 
But as to communities, not one can well claim ex- 
emption from some blame on this behalf. 

But if the most absolute of Christ's laws be pub- 
licly dishonoured by Christian bodies ; and if, in the 
eye of the world, the mark of unity and love be 
wanting, the serious question presents itself, Whether 
it may be allowable to claim for any body of Chris- 
tians, as such, the praise of possessing and of " holding 
forth" that Spiritual Christianity of which we are 
speaking ? 

We shall excuse ourselves from the task of dis- 
tinctly replying to so weighty a question — content to 
know that, in whatever way it might be answered 
by the champions of parties, Christ's law of love is in 
fact cordially accepted, and visibly honoured too, by 
no small number of individual Christians, within each 
department of the orthodox and evangelic common- 
wealth. Even if the visible, or ecclesiastical con- 
dition of the Christian community be not auspicious, 
happily its interior condition (so we fully believe) is 
of a far more cheering character ; and is such as 
may safely be held to indicate the approach of a 
better exterior, as well as interior mode of com- 
bination. 

A decisive improvement of this sort, or a reno- 
vation of the visible, as well as of the interior 

H 2 



148 



ON SPIRITUAL 



condition of the Christian body, giving open honour 
to Christ's great command^ is what remains to be ex- 
pected as the final development of the energies of the 
Gospel ; and v^hich must precede, and vs^ould bring 
in, its general triumph in the world. 

To have undertaken to speak of the ethical cha- 
racteristics of Spiritual Christianity with an intention 
to abstain from all allusion to that great characteristic 
of Christian morals — Christian love, would have been 
to compromise momentous truths in a most culpable 
manner. Or to have brought forward this leading 
subject, yet with a timid determination to be blind and 
deaf as to what is passing around us ; and by all 
means to avoid the peril of offending any prejudices, 
would have been to put to shame the profession we 
have more than once made of independence and con- 
scientious impartiality. 

But it would have been in a very peculiar sense 
blameworthy to adopt any such temporizing rule of 
discretion in the present instance, when the task 
which we are engaged to attempt, is — to exhibit the 
glory and beauty of Christianity as it is found in 
the inspired writings ; — not as it may happen to be 
represented, at a particular time, by this or that 
community. Moreover, we are to perform this task 
with an especial view to the feelings and opinions of 
those who are presumed not hitherto to have so fully 
considered the momentous subject of the divine origin 
of the Gospel, as would give it its due influence over 
their convictions. 

Now there can be no doubt that, with very many 



CHRISTIANITY. 



149 



persons of this class — intelligent, observant, and candid, 
who yet are not intimately acquainted, and perhaps not 
in any degree acquainted with the personal sentiments 
of Christian people, the scandal of those religious 
dissensions which of late have become so obtrusive, 
operates to excuse them to themselves from the duty 
of seriously considering the claims of the Gospel. If 
we could only bring to view the secret causes of that 
infidelity which, it is to be feared, prevails among 
the educated classes, this now named — the scandal 
arising from religious dissensions, would probably 
appear to be one of the most frequent and deter- 
minative. 

The advocates of Christianity are no doubt entitled 
to the argument they so often resort to, in their con- 
troversy with its opponents, when they affirm that 
the religion of Christ is rejected because it reproves 
a vicious course of life. This is true, but it is only 
a partial truth ; and it would be well if, whenever it 
is advanced, a candid acknowledgment were made of 
the unquestionable fact, that it is the envy, wrath, 
strife, malice," and ambition, seen to attach to re- 
ligious bodies, quite as much as the pride, or covetous- 
ness, or sensuality harbouring in the bosom of the 
infidel, that prevent his submission to an argument 
which he finds himself unable logically to refute. 

Such persons — we mean the intelligent, observant, 
and candid, who hold out against the Christian 
evidences on the plea of the unseemly discords of 
professed Christians, are invited to take a wider grasp 
of this particular subject. 



150 



ON SPIRITUAL 



Let such persons maturely consider, first, the 
obvious fact that Christianity itself condemns as 
decisively the evil tempers generated by religious dis- 
agreements, as it condemns any other immoralities : 
clearly itself is a religion of love and meekness ; and 
moreover it contains (however little they have hitherto 
been regarded) sufficient, and very precise provisions, 
securing to Christians liberty of conscience, while 
cordial fellowship is not disturbed. The religion of 
Christ should therefore bear none of the blame 
accruing from religious strifes. 

But the persons now intended are especially 
requested to give attention to those views of Christian 
history which have several times been referred to in 
the course of these Lectures. — Church history is the 
story of the perpetually renewed struggles of Truth, 
Justice, Purity, Love, not merely with the bad 
passions of men individually, nor merely with false and 
immoral principles, in the abstract; but with the 
definite and visible forms under which those bad 
passions, or these immoral principles have, from 
time to time, appeared, as digested and conven- 
tional evils, attaching to the social system. 

With several of these prescriptive mischiefs 
Christianity has wrestled, and has prevailed over 
them ; nor ever again, probably, shall it meet these 
its antagonists, erect. With some others — slavery 
for instance, and the hateful prejudice of colour, it 
is now, and before our eyes contending, nor can any 
who have attentively watched its preceding victories 
over the most formidable and deeply intrenched evils, 



CHRISTIANITY. 



151 



doubt what must be the issue of the contest which is 
now in progress. 

We come then to our immediate subject. It is 
clear that, unless the natural course of human affairs 
were miraculously diverted ; or, in other words, 
unless a direct administration of whatever relates 
to religion, by Heaven's infallible agents— such as 
the papal system assumes for itself, were supposed — 
the conservation of dogmatic truth, and the clear 
definition of it, in all its details, could not well 
be secured otherwise than by the free oppositions of 
minds differently constituted, and differently schooled ; 
and by the unchecked collisions of bodies, inde- 
pendent and separately powerful. Truth has mise- 
rably suffered whenever such oppositions and collisions 
have been successfully prevented by the hand of 
despotic spiritual power. Absolutely excluded they 
have never been, nor can be ; but they go on with 
little advantage to truth, and with incalculable damage 
to the social system, and with great disturbance to 
civil affairs, when the two contending parties are in 
the relative positions of tyrants and martyrs. Who 
can wish this inevitable conflict, by which truth is 
conserved, to be maintained under conditions so 
terrible, so precarious, and so costly? 

But the other form of this contest is that which 
attaches to the present condition of civil society, and 
under which the deep religious convictions of minds, 
diversely constituted, and more diversely trained, are 
suffered to work and to heave, exempted from any 
external restraints. This then is the dispensation 



152 ON SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY. 



through which we are now passing ; — a dispensation 
indeed of peculiar trial to the constancy and temper 
of Christian men, as well as of sad scandal toward the 
irreligious many. Yet is it to a great extent, as we 
have said, remedied, or its ill effects obviated, by the 
individual piety and devout sentiments of multitudes 
of private Christians. These individuals are so many, 
and the feeling among them so decisively tends 
toward a happier condition which should allow of 
an unintercepted fellowship of love, that the actual 
approach of it seems to be more than dimly indi- 
cated. 

The season of unrestrained dissension, with all its 
evils, when it shall have had its time and fulfilled 
its purpose, in the elucidation and establishment of 
dogmatic truth, shall pass away, and the great and 
characteristic principle of the Gospel — its law of love, 
shall then — ^just as the other moral energies of the 
same Gospel have successively expanded their forces, 
and have triumphed — triumph also itself, as well 
ill the bosoms of Christians individually, as in the 
Christian commonw^ealth, and visibly exhibit on earth 
the pattern of the order and unity of heaven. 



THE 



FOURTH LECTURE. 



SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY THE HOPE OF THE WORLD 
AT THE PRESENT MOMENT. 



H 3 



THE FOURTH LECTURE. 



While showing, as we propose now to do, that 
the principles of Spiritual Christianity, Doctrinal 
and Ethical, and which have been advanced in the 
preceding Lectures, furnish the ground of a bright 
hope of a much improved moral condition of the 
human family, we shall carefully abstain from rest- 
ing our argument upon questionable anticipations of 
any kind, whether political, philosophical, or such as 
might be derived from interpretations of unfulfilled 
Scripture prophecies. 

What we now propose is very simple, and our 
argument is direct, and our conclusion scarcely to 
be disputed, if only those principles are granted to 
be true, which already we have insisted upon as 
sufficiently established. 

We take up then, in turn, three or four of those 
elements of Spiritual Christianity which attach to it 
as an impulse of action ; and after briefly exhibiting 
each, in its connexion with the truths whence it 
springs, shall ask whether, supposing such motives or 
principles powerfully to affect the hearts of Chris- 



156 



ON SPIRITUAL 



tians, throughout a community, they would not afford 
a ground of the very happiest anticipations which the 
philanthropist can entertain for the world at large ? 

We shall advance into the midst of our argument, 
after briefly adverting to two subjects, directly re- 
lated to it, and which at the present moment are of 
urgent importance. The first of these is the slender 
and very questionable value of any other hope than 
that which Christianity furnishes, of seeing the wel- 
fare of the human family materially promoted, either 
in a physical or a moral sense. 

Does it appear that Civilization alone^ with its 
intercourse and traffic — its arts, and its ^'useful" 
sciences — its town-crowding industry, and its dis- 
orderly peopling of wildernesses — its hurry, and 
impatience of restraint — its intensity of individual 
will, and its contempt of authority — its uncon- 
trollable sway of the masses — its unlooked-for upturns 
and reverses — its passionate pursuit of momentary 
advantages, and its appetite for such gratifications as 
may be snatched in all haste ; — does it appear that 
civilization alone (Christian influence not considered) 
is likely much to promote the personal and home-feli- 
city of the millions it is summoning into life ? Judging 
of what is future, from what we see around us, dare we 
look to mere civilization as worthy to be trusted with 
the moral, or even with the physical well-being of the 
human family; and with the guardianship of the 
generation next coming up?— Dare we, if we had 
the infant human race in our arms — dare we turn 
ourselves to that care-worn personage, our modern 



CHRISTIANITY, 



157 



Civilization, sitting at her factory gate, and sa}^ to 
her — " Take this child, and nurse it for me ?" 

It is indeed by no means easy, either to define 
correctly what we mean by civilization, a term 
vaguely embracing a vast assemblage of hetero- 
geneous elements ; — or completely to sever, in our 
minds, the notion of mere civilization, from that of 
those moral and religious influences which, in fact, 
are, in this country, so intimately blended with every 
thing around us. 

The nearest approach, perhaps, which we could 
make to a distinct conception of what civilization is, 
as severed from all Christian influences, would be 
eflfected by going into the heart of some of the con- 
tinental communities ; — might we, without offence, 
say France, where, while all the elements of national 
imiprovement, in v/ealth, science, literature, refine- 
ment, are in high activity, the concomitant influence 
of Christianity, though not absolutely wanting, is 
reduced to the smallest dimensions imaginable, if it 
is to exist at all. 

In looking then to mere civilization as exhibited in 
a country like France, we must affirm that the issue 
of the social movement, considered as tending to pro- 
mote the personal and domestic well-being of the 
mass of the people, is altogether ambiguous, and such 
as may give ground, with an equal appearance of 
reason, to the darkest, as to the brightest anticipa- 
tions. And then if we were to look to such a country 
as a centre of benevolent endeavours for the diflTiision 
of happiness through the world, could we name any 



158 ON SPIRITUAL 

definite grounds of hope, whatever, in this respect ? 
Or is it not nearly as reasonable to suppose that light, 
truth, peace, humanity, should emanate from China, 
as from France, and thence cover the earth? 

In referring to this particular instance, we are in- 
fluenced by no national prejudice ; and in truth 
would entertain the hope that France, admitting at 
length Christian Truth, may yet awake, to run 
abreast with England — as in wealth, philosophy, 
literature, so in the enlightened labours of universal 
philanthropy. But if so, it will not be as a civilized^ 
but as a Christianized country, that she will do it. 

Mere Civilization is too likely to ally herself to that 
atheistic and sensual philosophy which comports so 
well with the temper and aims of a commercial peo- 
ple. We mean the philosophy which regards man 
simply as one of the mammalia, and as distinguished 
from others of his order only by a loftier facial angle, 
by some ounces more of the cerebral mass, by the 
jointing of his thumb, and by the possession of 
a heel bone. But how is such a union — such a 
conspiracy, to be deprecated ! Too soon might busy 
Civilization, bent on gain, take Animal Philosophy 
into her establishment, as the most compliant and 
serviceable of her creatures ; and this shrewd minion, 
teaching her mistress to blush at no well calculated 
and undoubtedly profitable cruelty, would undertake 
to prove that those who draw prizes in the lottery of 
life are unwise if they spoil their peace by any com- 
punctious sympathies toward the less fortunate mil- 
lions of the species. 



CHRISTIANITY. 



159 



If we imagine all Christian feeling and Christian 
truth to be withdrawn, the present is a time of high in- 
tensity indeed, in the social system ; but of very low 
moral temperature ; nor can we confide in any disposi- 
tion which is the proper growth of such a time, as an 
impulse of benevolence, or as aflfording any ground of 
hope for the melioration of the lot of man. 

But we turn to the second of those subjects which 
we mentioned as incidental to our argument. This 
is the altogether peculiar position which we, the 
people of England, at this passing moment occupy, 
in relation to the human family. Has not the part 
of an Elder Brother of this great family actually 
fallen upon the English race ? and have not the 
solicitudes of such a relationship actually become 
ours ? Are we not by many interests, and by motives 
higher than any interests, compelled, in some mea- 
sure, nay to a great extent, to think for all, to care 
for all, to defend the w^eak, to forefend the strong ; 
and is there not now pervading the people of this 
country, even as a temper which has become charac- 
teristically British, a kindly sympathy in what affects 
the welfare of each race of the human family ; — such 
a feeling, at least, as has never belonged to any other 
people, in any age ? If many partake not at all of 
any such feeling, they are fewer than those who are 
alive to it in a good degree. 

With all the paths of the world now mapped be- 
fore us, and with means of communication which, for 
practical ends, condense the population of the earth, 
as if the thousand millions were crowded upon a ball 



160 



ON SPIRITUAL 



of one third the diameter ; and with actual colonial 
possession of a large portion of the earth, and with 
moral possession , by high character and repute, of 
almost the whole of it ; and with all these uncalcu- 
lated and untried means of influence now ripened, 
and presented afresh to our hands, who is it that can 
altogether control those mingling emotions of patriot- 
ism and of expansive benevolence, which become us, 
occupying as we do a position, whence we may go 
forth to conquer the world, not for ambition, not for 
wealth ; but for Truth and Peace ! 

And as we do stand in this position, and as we do, 
in so great a measure, entertain the feelings proper 
to it ; so is there a reciprocity of feeling widely dif- 
fused among the nations.— British political influence 
or national supremacy apart, the British feeling — its 
honour, its justice, and its humanity, are in fact 
understood in the remotest regions, and are trusted to 
by tribes whose names we have not yet learned to 
pronounce. The several designations by which En- 
glish benevolence, in its various forms styles itself, 
have, as watch-words of hope, traversed the ocean, 
and have pervaded wildernesses ; and these titles of 
our organized philanthropy have already wakened the 
dull ear of half civilized continents, and are rever- 
berated from the hill-sides of the remotest barbarism. 

It is true that England is looked to, as the helper, 
guardian, guide, of the nations. And assuredly it is 
the Christianity of England which gives depth, 
substance, life, to her repute through the world, as 
the lover of justice, and the mover of good. 



CHRISTIANITY. 



161 



But whatever England may yet do, or may fail to do, 
for the world ; it is to Christianity itself that we look 
as containing the only impelb'ng motives of an effec- 
tive philanthropy. 

Neither the vastness of the field that is before 
"US in this instance, nor the variety of the objects it 
embraces, should be allowed to confuse our appre- 
hensions of what is in itself very simple. In relation 
to any hope of amendment, or to the principles which 
should be relied upon in our endeavours to effect it, 
the human family is but as — a single family ; the 
community of nations is but as — a numerous house- 
hold ; or, that we may exclude objections, let it 
suffice to say, that whatever is true, and whatever 
would be practically advisable, if our intention were 
only to bring about a reform within some small and 
insulated settlement which had fallen into disorder, 
is also true, and would be in a practical sense wise to 
recommend, when it is the millions of this insulated 
world that we are thinking of. 

Human nature is one, whether we take it by fifties, 
or by millions. Neither fifties nor millions, when 
fallen from a condition of social order and purity, 
will renovate themselves spontaneously. But whether 
it be a smaller or a larger community that is wisely 
cared for, and taught, and aided, the fruit of such 
labours will in due time appear. 

To simplify then, as much as possible our present 
course of inquiry, let us imagine that we have before 
us a colony of very limited extent — the two or three 
hundred families of a remote settlement; and that, 



162 



ON SPIRITUAL 



in visiting them, we find some of these families to 
have sunk, through neglect and untov^ard events, 
into the most abject state of destitution, ignorance, 
and vice ; w^hile those less degraded, and who are 
enjoying the comforts of wealth, seem in a very 
slio'ht dejxree conscious of the wretchedness which 
surrounds them ; or at least are little disposed to 
attempt any methods of remedy. 

Now, putting out of view the political or legal 
provisions we might wish to introduce, for effecting 
the restoration of such a colony ; let us imagine a 
doctrine which, if we could but give it universal 
currency and credit, would at once operate as an 
invigorating medicine, administered to a languishing 
patient, in restoring vital energy to the social body. 
We find a large portion of this community fallen into 
a condition of wretchedness which renders them the 
objects of scorn, and of consequent ill-treatment, from 
others; and which breeds, in their own bosoms, a 
desponding apathy, and robs them of all self-respect 
and healthful activity. 

As the remedy of these evils, we preach a doctrine 
which, without flattering self-love or inspiring inso- 
lence, confers upon every individual of this com- 
munity — young and old, and however degraded, a 
hitherto unthought of importance ; and which chal- 
lenges every soul as the rightful claimant by birth 
of certain high prerogatives. Let but this doctrine 
be received by all as undoubtedly founded in fact ; 
and then, although the inequality of conditions is not 
merged, the rich and the powerful learn to respect 



CHRISTIANITY. 



163 



their less fortunate brethren ; while these learn — what 
is indispensable to any reformation — to respect them- 
selves. The promulgation of this doctrine introduces 
a new era, and will probably be of more efficacy in 
dispelling abject poverty and vice, than any political 
reforms that can be thought of. 

I. 

What we need then for the renovation of the 
human family is — the spread of that life-giving doc- 
trine which we find in the Scriptures, and which 
challenges the abject and the wretched, universally, 
and unexceptively, as the heirs of immortality, and 
as individually embraced in the intention of the 
Gospel. 

It follows from this doctrine that men, even the 
vilest, are no more to be contemned; — for the Al- 
mighty does not contemn them : — they are no longer 
to be forgotten, or despotically abused, or selfishly 
despaired of ; for the Son of God has redeemed them. 
On the contrary ; they must now singly, and at what- 
ever cost, be sought out. instructed, cared for, and 
succoured. 

We ask only that a doctrine such as this should 
be heartily embraced by Christian nations, and should 
be carried out wherever such nations are coming in 
contact with barbarous and semi-barbarous races : 
must it not become a mighty energy, tending, directly 
and certainly, to the renovation of the world ? 

With the eye steadily fixed upon some loathsomely 
abject or ferocious race, the veriest outcasts of the 



164 



ON SPIRITUAL 



human family, let us suppose ourselves to listen to 
the proclamation of Heaven, issued in terms such as 
these — 

^^God so loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should 
not perish, but have everlasting life." Or thus — 

God our Saviour will have all men to be saved, and 
to come to the knowledge of the truth;" he having 
given himself, a ransom /or all, to be testified in 
due time." 

We might well be content to leave our argument 
upon the ground of this single evangelic principle ; 
and, in affirming our position to be certain, that the 
Redeemer of the world has thus opened the path of 
life to every child of man, attempt no more. If 
this be true, the motive of benevolence measures 
every occasion ; nor can its obligations be discharged 
so long as any of our brethren are unblessed. If 
this be true, v/e virtually destroy those whom we do 
not visit and instruct. No bosom can admit this truth, 
and remain either abject or selfish. 

But let it be understood, that we are neither, 
at this moment, going about to prove the truth 
of the principle we name, nor endeavouring to show 
that this or that zealous endeavour, now on foot to 
spread the Gospel, must prosper. All we are say- 
ing is this — That the Gospel, thus understood, and 
if warmly embraced, as a motive of conduct, does 
contain a reason and an impulse, tending directly to 
carry forth Christianity, and all its present blessings, 
from land to land, until the human family is every- 



CHRISTIANITY. 



165 



where happy ; and it does this by its solemn challenge 
of every human being, as its otvn : how vile soever 
by actucil condition, every human being is yet pre- 
cious and honourable as redeemed. In virtue of this 
great truth, let us find man loathsome as he may be, 
we yet may not despise, nor abhor, nor neglect 
him. As a member of the family, he is indeed " dead 
in Adam but yet is he alive in Christ." In re- 
spect of every child of man, lost as he may seem, 
and visibly despicable, the Redeemer, stretching 
forth his hand in caution, says, Take heed that ye 
despise him not." 

Those therefore who give the greatest prominence 
to 'the doctrine of redemption, and who hold it and 
proclaim it in the freest manner, are the truest bene- 
factors to their species. The doctrine which attaches 
infinite importance to human nature singly, and 
which declares the condition of each to be yet hope- 
ful, is the effective impulse of philanthropy. Let it 
only be believed, and the outcasts will be reclaimed. 
Can philosophy imagine a dogma more auspicious in 
its tendency than this which confers the highest, and 
let us grant it, a fearful dignity upon every human 
heing, as immortal, and as responsible ; and which 
opens to him, without a plea of exception, the 
brightest hopes ? It must be a doctrine such as this, 
if there be any, that will at once recover him from 
degradation, and defend him from oppression. 

Instead of imagining, or of teaching any such 
benign doctrine as this, the mood of philosophy has 
always been contemptuous toward the degraded races 



166 



ON SPIRITUAL 



of mankind. Or whatever philanthropy it may 
have professed, it has set on foot no endeavours to 
recover the lost. Too often has it connived at the 
atrocities of which these have been the victims. 

The Christian's axiom — That men are individually 
to be respected, and to be cared for, and that human 
life and well-being must not be trifled with, is not 
the maxim of the Despot, whose palace is under- 
mined with dungeons ; nor of the Founder of empire 
and the conqueror of kingdoms, who rears pyramids 
of human skulls. It is not the maxim of the rapa- 
cious trafficker, who amasses mountains of gold by 
dealing in a drug that poisons the body and soul of 
millions. Nor is the Christian doctrine, on this 
head, in any favour with the lovers of pleasure, or 
with cold sensualists, who never ask at what cost of 
human misery their gratifications may have been 
provided. All these parties love to think of men as 
despicable singly, and despicable in the mass ; and, 
whether to be counted by tens, or by millions, as 
nothing better than the dust in the balance, when 
weighed against the desires of pride, or the lust of 
power, or of animal indulgence. 

Not so the Gospel ; and if we only assume it to be 
believed as true, by any one who, at the impulse of 
selfish passions, may be prompted to trample upon 
the well-being or comfort of his fellows, he hears 
that awful warning, directed to himself — It were 
better for a man that a mill stone were hanged about 
his neck, and he cast into the depths of the sea — it 
were better for a man never to have been born, than 



CHRISTIANITY. 



167 



that he should despise or offend one of the least of 
those for whom Christ died." This may not indeed 
stay the oppressor in his course ; but it tends to do 
so ; and it will, if opinion around him be free, and 
Christianlike. 

Inasmuch as contempt for himself is at once the 
parent and the offspring of misery to the individual, 
so is contempt for others the prompter of all crimes. 
But convey into the heart of the wretched this Gos- 
pel truth, which shows him his own religious dignity, 
and he starts from the earth ; or lodge it in the con- 
science of the oppressor, and he is staggered in the 
execution of his purpose. 

But we may easily make proof of the tendency and 
efficacy of our principle, by applying it to instances 
always near at hand. Governed by an undoubting 
belief of what Christianity affirms concerning every 
human being, let us penetrate some of those caverns 
of woe which undermine (literally and metaphorically 
undermine) our great towns. And, when pleasure 
and business have had their dues, let us enter the 
home — home, alas ! can it be called ? — of our brother, 
whom hitherto we have not thought of as such. Let 
us learn from his own lips, what he, and his, endure 
from day to day; and have endured through the round 
of our smiling years. And let us listen, either while 
he recounts his dull variety of present miseries, or 
while he tells of the utter neglect of his infancy, of 
the destitution, and the thoughtless crimes of his 
childhood, of the infamy of his youth, of the wild 
desperation and enormity of his manhood ; and now 



168 



ON SPIRITUAL 



of the sullen anguish of his last years of utter wretch- 
edness. And yet this our brother, whom we find as 
a broken vessel, cast forth and abhorred, was formed 
like ourselves capable of enjoyment, which he has 
never tasted but as poison ; and capable of virtue too, 
of which he has known nothing but such a rumour as 
remorse may have whispered in his tortured ear. It 
is true that even he was formed for happiness, and 
for virtue ; and — if the Gospel be true, he is still 
capable of both ; and even now might his ear 
be wakened by the alarms of mercy ; and even now 
might he hear the voice that speaks from heaven 
— " Arise thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give 
thee life." Even might this, our abject brother 
be regained, and be taught to set out in our com- 
pany on the road to Heaven. If the Gospel be true, 
all this is true ; and moreover, if we believe it to he true, 
it will impel us thus to seek him that was lost, and to 
soothe his withered soul with the sounds of grace 
which ourselves have listened to. 

Whether true or not, is not now our question ; but 
we affirm that, if thoroughly believed to be true — 
this evangelic principle, which confers dignity upon 
the meanest of the human race, and opens hope be- 
fore the most sunken eye, does include a substantial, 
efficacious means, directly and pow^erfuUy tending to 
raise the fallen, and to diffuse happiness. 

The same religious regard to the welfare of who- 
ever shares with us the hopes of immortality, and 
which impels the missionary to follow the track of 
savage hordes, and prompts labours of charity nearer 



CHRISTIANITY. 



169 



home, yet hardly less arduous — this feeling, if 
brought into the family circle, imparts a new and 
more serious conviction of duty to the course we 
pursue in promoting the highest good of our children; 
for if it be reasonable to send missionaries to the 
opposite hemisphere, at so great cost and risk, how 
unreasonable to be remiss in training those most dear 
to us, in " the nurture and admonition of the Lord 
And the same principle forbids our regarding our 
servants as the mere instruments of our convenience ; 
nor, if we admit it, shall we dare to compromise the 
religious welfare of any whom we employ, from 
motives of personal advantage or comfort. 

Let it now be granted us that this axiom, 
which puts the seal of God upon the forehead of 
every human being, does most convincingly prove 
the Gospel itself to be from Heaven. Is it not, 
herein, a clear expression of infinite goodness ? 
Many who have rejected the authority of the Scrip- 
tures have yet been ready to acknowledge the benign 
tendency of the ethical system they teach ; but few 
have discerned that still more striking evidence of 
its divine origin which arises from a consideration 
of the characteristic article we have here adverted to. 
Christ commands us " to love our enemies but 
more than this, and of weightier import is the prin- 
ciple which leads the Christian to remember that 
even his most inveterate enemy may, should God 
grant him repentance, become his companion through 
a happy immortality. The mere rule of love, or the 
verbal precept is almost lost in the depth of the 

I 



170 



ON SPIRITUAL 



motive which such a belief inspires. Whoever has 
acquired the habit of thinking of those around him, 
individually, as the heirs of immortality, has little 
more to learn in that department of morals which 
relates to our duty toward our neighbour. 

11. 

If we are thus taught to entertain a religious 
reverence in regard to the welfare of every member 
of the human family, it remains to ask. What the 
quality of those emotions is with which, as Chris- 
tians, we should labour to promote that welfare ? 

We reply that these emotions, and in a degree far 
surpassing any others, are profound and intense ; and 
they are so in proportion to the firmness of our con- 
fidence in the reality of the Gospel itself — or, in 
other words, to our personal piety. 

Much and habitual meditation on the vast theme 
of our own immortality, cannot but bring with it a 
solicitude, even painfully intense, for the spiritual 
welfare of others. And as is the personal religious 
feeling, so is the relative feeling which expresses 
itself in Christian zeal. The waste places of the 
w^orld will not be made to blossom, nor wdll the 
mephitic dens of superstition ever be fearlessly 
entered, nor the horrors of savage life encountered, 
merely because it is abstractedly right that such 
perils should be met, and such labours undergone. 
But both the danger and the toil are contemned, 
when Christian men, who are happily conscious of 
che divine truth and power of the Gospel, think of 



CHRISTIANITY. 



171 



their fellow-men as ignorant of it. It is then that 
benevolent zeal burns with a steady flame, when 
evangelists, with the animation of a personal experi- 
ence of the truth, go forth saying, We have seen 
and do testify, that the Father sent the Son to be 
the Saviour of the world !" 

There is however a peculiarity attaching to the 
emotions of Christian benevolence, which claims to 
be noticed. These feelings seem, in truth, lo in- 
volve a paradox, which we should not leave unex- 
plained. 

It might have been thought that a religion the 
very purport of which is to teach the comparative 
insignificance of the interests of the present transient 
life, would almost inevitably induce, so far as it takes 
effect, an apathy and indifierence toward them ; and 
especially so, when it is the temporal welfare of 
others, not of ourselves, that is thought of. How 
natural to suppose that the adherents of such a re- 
ligion w^ould be distinguished from other men by 
their callous disregard of the brief sufferings and 
wants of those around them ! Why should we be- 
stow our pity upon the sorrows of an hour, or em- 
ploy our hands in relieving necessities which end so 
early? Much less should we sacrifice our personal 
religious enjoyments by labours of this kind ; or care 
for the bodily comfort of others, when spiritual con- 
templation might fully engage us. 

In truth, no such cold reasonings of spiritual self- 
ishness have ever been the characteristics of genuine 
Christian piety. The very contrary is true. This 



172 



ON SPIRITUAL 



is a fact which needs not to be proved. — The vast 
difference betv^een the ancient civilized v^orld, and 
the modern, turns very much upon it ; and in com- 
paring the two states of society, nothing is more 
remarkable than the incalculably greater extent of 
that regard which is paid to the bodily sufferings and 
wants of men in modern, than was paid in ancient 
times ; and this difference is a direct consequence of 
the influence of Christian motives. It is the be- 
lievers in a life hereafter who have done almost all 
that has ever been attempted for assuaging the sor- 
rows, and for enhancing the comforts of men in 
respect of the life now passing. 

The Christian, like his Master, not only has a 
larger, and a more long-sighted compassion than 
other men ; but a more sensitive compassion also — 
a pity more quick and prompt — a pity of nicer tact, 
and a more generous and gentle sympathy, employing 
itself, not merely upon those evils which are ominous 
of remote ruin ; but upon those which must become 
extinct in the grave. 

What are the facts which every day exemplify 
these assertions ? The very persons among us who 
think with mournful alarm of the spiritual destitution 
of the heathen world — these persons are those who 
witness, with the most sensitive indignation, the 
bodily miseries of oppressed races. The very same 
hearts v/hich beat with the hope of bringing pagan 
nations to the knowledge of salvation, these same 
bosoms thrill with delight while listening to the 
traveller, who describes the decent happiness of the 



CHRISTIANITY. 



173 



once ferocious savage, and the petty comforts and 
embellishments of his home ! In explanation of these 
facts it is obvious to point to the check v^hich is given 
to selfishness by the Christian code ; and to notice 
the general warmth v^hich is difi'used through the 
moral faculties by the devout affections. But beyond 
this, we are to remember that Christian piety very 
much promotes, and indeed consists in, the habit of 
connecting the incidents of the present life, from 
hour to hour, with the well-being of the life to come ; 
and involves a constant recollection of the moral 
bearing of the present, upon the future. This habit 
having been formed — a sort of pulsation is maintained 
— a vital throb, beating forward, every moment, from 
time into eternity. But then there is a return in this 
flow — it is a circulation of life ; and thus it is that 
eternity sends back upon the interests of time an 
undefined, yet weighty sense of its own powers — 
communicating a serious intensity, and imparting a 
value, even to the good or ill of an hour. Whatever 
therefore, belonging to this life, which is not in itself 
frivolous, or sensual, or sordid— and no human suf- 
fering is frivolous, no gentle aflfection of the heart 
indiflPerent — whatever is not so, instead of its exciting 
less sympathy through its relationship to a future 
life, excites so much the more. The mind, fully 
penetrated by the deeply-working aflTections which 
are its preparation for taking part in the felicity of 
heaven, and finding them to be pent up within the 
narrow limits of earth, applies them with — might we 
say it — a disproportionate spring and force to what- 



174 



ON SPIRITUAL 



ever around it is of a quality naturally to excite 
them. 

The more piety, therefore, the more compassion ; 
and the quick sympathies of a Christian heart apply 
themselves, in easy alternation, now to the spiritual, 
and now to the temporal necessities of men ; and with 
a oneness of force, or momentum, and with almost 
the same earnestness of zeal, administer relief, either 
to the bod}^ or to the soul. 

There is a depth of meaning in this fact, considered 
in connexion with the movements now in progress 
for evangelizing barbarous and half-civilized races. 
We invite attention to it from any who, although 
they may not choose to class themselves with the 
religious," would not wish to be thought indifferent 
to the happiness of their fellows. 

Why such persons should not aid Christian mis- 
sions, on the obvious ground that Christianity carries 
the blessings of civilization along with it — does not 
appear. Let us however for a moment admit the 
plea which such might advance — That these evan- 
gelizing projects are fanatical in principle, and are 
injudiciously managed ; and are therefore very likely 
to come to a speedy termination." Nevertheless if it 
were so, it is certain that, under this very agency 
those regions are being explored where the most 
horrid usages prevail, by men whose very characteristic 
it is (whether we think them fanatics or not) to feel 
more sensitively than others, and much more so than 
traders or philosophical travellers ever do, the miseries 
and oppressions which they there witness. From 



CHRISTIANITY. 



175 



whom is it that we have derived, during the last thirty 
years, a competent and specific knowledge of the 
vilifying influence of the superstitions of India, and 
of the foul and cruel practices which attach to them ? 
Is it not mainly from Christian missionaries ? Even 
then if it were granted that the overwrought sensi- 
bility of some of these reporters has exaggerated the 
descriptions they have sent home, yet, taken in the 
mass, such narratives are authentic, and they remain 
uncontradicted by those from whom we should never 
have received any such accounts. It is none but men 
whose feelings have been rendered keen by the 
religious affections, that could collect these reports : — 
irreligious m.en, though they have eyes to see, do not 
see, though they have ears to hear, do not hear, 
these things ; nor have they hearts seriously to be 
affected by the miseries of their fellows. 

It should therefore be regarded as a circumstance 
of very peculiar importance — we mean it should so 
be regarded b}^ all who would be numbered among 
philanthropists and philosophers, that, at this moment, 
the world is every where set about, or sentinelled with 
warm-hearted men, and with tender-spirited women 
too, whose personal benevolent dispositions have im- 
pelled them to undertake such a part ; and who are 
always observing and reporting whatever is cruel, 
ferocious, impure, and wretched, in those regions 
where, through a long course of ages, no check what- 
ever has restrained the worst passions of human 
nature. But at length these " dark places of the 
earth" — full as they are of "the habitations of cruelty," 



176 



ON SPIRITUAL 



are opened to the inspection of men governed by- 
happier dispositions. We ask then — and we invite 
a reply to the question — Is not this fact of the mere 
* inspection of such regions, by such persons, a great 
point gained for humanity ? and have not the reports 
which are thus continually furnished, and presented 
to the civilized world, a direct tendency to bring to 
bear upon the evils so reported, whatever reliefs or 
remedies it may be possible to administer to them ? 
Where then are the philanthropists who are back- 
ward to hail this modern system of Christian visita- 
tion, or to aid in sustaining it ? 

At the present moment, and with the hearty con- 
currence of philosophers, scientific estabhshments are 
formed in several latitudes, and in both hemispheres, 
for noting and recording the synchronous pulsations of 
the magnetic fluid. A worthy engagement we grant. 
But after all, if what concerns the happiness of man 
be an end not unworthy of serious regard, do we 
do well to forget the labours and perils of those 
who, during the past forty years, have been noting 
and reporting (what, since the world has been peopled, 
none have thus reported) the extreme degradations 
of the human family ? 

The thus accumulated knowledge of the actual 
condition of the several races of mankind, constitutes 
a fund of benevolent excitement, acting always upon 
sensitive Christian hearts ; and so tending to recruit 
the ranks of evangelic labour. The purely religious 
desire to convert the heathen," and the conviction 
of duty in this behalf, may be regarded as a constant 



CHRISTIANITY. 



177 



force, acting upon Christian minds in an equable 
manner ; but the vivid impression of ^present miseries 
to be relieved, acts intensely upon the class of minds 
best adapted to the arduous work of breaking up the 
barbarism of untutored nations. Thus it is that 
Christian compassion for hodily sufferings, and a 
Christian zeal for the propagation of Truth, tend in 
conjunction to diffuse every species of good. 

Let it now be imao-ined that a human eye were 
suddenly endowed with a microscopic power, reaching 
far and wide, and embracing at once earth and sky — 
and the myriads of every inch, and the organs and 
faculties of each living thing, in all. Nothing in 
such a prospect would be exaggeration : nothing 
more than mere truth would be presented, even by 
so multiform and vast a revelation of the organized 
and conscious w^orld ; and, if there were any infer- 
ence properly arising from such a spectacle, and 
bearing upon our personal conduct, with what force 
would it come home to us ? 

"What then are Christian sympathies, and what are 
the quick sensibilities, and the far-extending antici- 
pations of a Christian heart ; — and what is this habit 
of feeling, as to things present, with a force which 
borrows impulse from the weight of eternity, what 
are these habits and sensibilities, as applied to the 
wdde compass of the moral world, but a sort of micro- 
scopic power, revealing, at a glancej whatever that 
circle embraces — both present and future ? All that 
may be suffered, and all that might be enjoyed, by 
our brethren of the human family, opens itself to 

i3 



178 



ON SPIRITUAL 



our consciousness, and if our personal agency may be 
thought to stand in any manner related to this vast 
range of good or ill, the motives of benevolence 
admit all the depth and intensity which our feeble 
nature can at all sustain. 

It is not to be supposed that all minds, or that 
many, could surrender themselves to sensibilities 
such as these : — but some do in fact thus feel ; and 
some do thus think of what surrounds them ; and 
although they can by no means so govern the emo- 
tions of which they are conscious as to be able to 
give them intelligible expression ; yet they do, if 
well constituted, and if ruled by Christian maxims, 
so resolve, and so act as to draw many in their train, 
and to lead forth bands of Christian philanthropy. 
In every age there have been a few thus to feel ; and 
in an age like the present, which favours the active 
employment of these deep energies of the soul, 
men, so moulded, who otherwise might either have 
smothered their emotions, or have misdirected them 
toward some purpose of fanaticism, will go forth to 
carry blessings, wherever man is yet ignorant and 
unhappy. 

III. 

We have seen that Christianity rescues every mem- 
ber of the human family, singly, from contempt, 
oppression, and wretchedness, by attaching to each 
an infinite importance, as responsible, and immortal, 
and as entitled to the benefits of redemption. We 



CHRISTIANITY. 



179 



have seen moreover that, to give practical effect to 
this principle, the Gospel generates sentiments of 
humanity and compassion, peculiarly vivid, w^hether 
excited by the bodily sufferings, or the spiritual 
destitution of our fellows. But these two distinctions 
of the religion of Christ are connected with 

A Law of Diffusion ; 

and we must, in this instance, use the word law in 
both its customary senses, as intending — a statute, 
or sanctioned comm.and ; and an impulse, or force, 
or an established mode of action ; as when we speak 
of the laws of nature. 

Our religion must be carried out into all the world ; 
for its Author has formally and solemnly enjoined 
his ministers so to promulgate it ; and it would be 
thus propagated ; because those in whose bosoms it 
resides with power, feel impelled to communicate 
the happiness they derive from it. 

The great fact, several times adverted to in the 
course of these Lectures, of the slow development of 
the powers of Christianity, is most signally illustrated 
in the instance of this, its Law and Impulse of Diffu- 
sion. Both took full effect in the apostolic era; and 
within a century from the ascension of Christ, his 
doctrine had been carried, with effect, throughout 
the area of the Roman world ; and even far beyond 
it. But from the time when nefarious means were 
resorted to for grasping a still-pagan population 
within the arms of the church, by bringing Chris- 



180 



ON SPIRITUAL 



tiaiiity itself to the nearest resemblance possible, to 
the ancient polytheism — from that time onward, 
little or nothing deserving to be named as an exten- 
sion of the Gospel, took place during a long series of 
ages. Nations were varnished with Christian rites — 
but were not evangelized. 

And most remarkable is the continued torpor of 
this expansive force during the great awakening 
season of the Reformation. Other principles were 
then to be developed; — this was to wait its hour. 
But its hour has come ; and England is the theatre 
of its expansion. 

Those who can free themselves from the thrall of 
irreligious prejudices (and no prejudices are more 
firm in their texture, or more narrow) and who are 
accustomed to read the future in the past, will not find 
it easy to resist the belief that a christianizing of the 
world is to be the consequence of that singular con- 
juncture of circumstances which makes this country, 
at the same moment, the centre of colonization, and 
the centre of the long inert, but now active Law of 
evangelical diff'usion. 

It is but incidentally that the evangelizing zeal of 
these times has sprung out of the commercial and 
colonial greatness of England. There has indeed 
been a connexion of causes, running from the one 
into the other ; but the main causes have had an 
altogether independent origin. 

We must be blind to the most conspicuous facts, 
if we fail to observe so remarkable a combination of 
tendencies as that to which we now advert. — 



CHRISTIANITY. 



181 



After sixteen or seventeen hundred years of an 
abeyance of the first law of the Christian code, and 
of the lethargy of its diffusive impulse, that law has 
at length fixed itself in all consciences, and the im- 
pulse has affected all hearts ; and this has happened 
among the most expansive and enterprising of civilized 
communities, and at a moment when, in various 
modes, the British stock, name, language, literature, 
feeling, habits, institutions, are taking possession of 
every unclaimed area upon the surface of the earth. 
And it should be observed that pure Christianity, as 
connected with this national outspread, is, in a very 
remarkable manner, justifying its characteristic as the 

salt of the earth" — or true conservative principle 
of the social system, the operation of which, is, by a 
silent but efficacious process, tending to secure the 
highest benefits which the philanthropist can desire. 
Christianity, felt to be indispensable to what may be 
called — colonial health, and to the actual preservation 
of settlements existing under precarious circum- 
stances, will be cherished and sustained, wherever 
the habits of the settlers are of the kind most likely 
to render a colony permanently prosperous ; while 
simultaneous settlements, not governed by Christian 
principles, and within which all the vices of old 
civilization collapse with the ferocities of savage life, 
will work their own ruin ; for this mixture of the 
worst elements of the tv/o forms of societv, cannot 
but be self-destructive. Such settlements must run 
their course — take their fate — and always pressing as 
they do toward disorder, dispersion, decay, must 



182 



ON SPIRITUAL 



ere long become extinct. Colonies which, by re- 
nouncing the Gospel and contemning its forms, 
abandon themselves to the miasmas of those swamps, 
whereinto the old w^orld drains itself, shall die out ; 
leaving the desecrated wilderness to enjoy its sab- 
baths, until a company fearing God, comes to redeem 
the desolation which atheism has left as her most 
significant monument. Thus by what may be re- 
garded as a natural process of colonial purification, 
and especially if aided, as it should be, by the pater- 
nal discretion and christianlike feeling of the govern- 
ment of a Christian country, the wastes of the earth 
must gradually be christianized ; — until, the world 
itself having become at once Christian and English, 
the very names shall almost be convertible. Can we 
then refrain our happy and hopeful feelings as Chris- 
tians, as patriots and as philanthropists, at a moment 
when Britain sits at home, like a watchful mother 
of a rising world ; — at a time when, by her direct, 
or by her moral influence, she keeps in awe many 
whom she does not rule, and when the sceptre of 
England has become a symbol of safety, and a pledge 
/ of justice to many nations ; and when the hand that 
holds that sceptre is screening from wrong the hut 
and hearth of savage tribes, on both sides the equa- 
tor ; at such a time, how does every motive, secular 
and religious, combine to enhance the earnestness of 
the desire, that a bright triumph of Spiritual Chris- 
tianity at home — its purification from ancient cor- 
ruptions — ^its diffusion among the neglected heathen 
of our great towns, and not less, its taking anew a 



CHRISTIANITY. 



183 



firm hold of the convictions of the upper and edu- 
cated classes — that by all these means, the Gospel — 
the only hope of man, may, even in our times, plant 
its banner of love on every shore ; — and moreover 
that, by the means of England, and through her in- 
fluence, " the multitude of the islands" may rejoice, 
and howling wildernesses be reclaimed, until the old 
civihzed world, hemmed in on all sides by a new 
and better social order, shall itself be reclaimed and 
regenerated ! 

Far are we from speaking of such events in the 
language of confident anticipation. All we afiirm is, 
That the Gospel of Chiist tends to bring them about; 
and that it will do so, should its influence in this 
country be much extended and refreshed. 

IV. 

We have to name a fourth^ and a most important 
distinction of Spiritual Christianity, fitting it to be 
regarded as the true and only effective instrument of 
universal good to the human family. In naming 
what we have now in view, we must ask that candid 
attention, which may exclude the probability of a 
misunderstanding of our real meaning. 

We affirm that Spiritual Christianity is peculiarly 
adapted to the purpose of diffusing truth and virtue 
through the world, because, as a spiritual system, It 

IS ALWAYS SUPERIOR TO EVERY VISIBLE INSTITU- 
TION. Such institutions, subject as they are to the 
control of man, and liable therefore always to per- 



184 



ON SPIRITUAL 



version and overtlirow, must often obstruct, or utterly 
forbid the progress of tbe Gospel, if it were inex- 
tricably connected with them ; or unless it were held 
to be separable from them, and of far higher import- 
ance than any, even the best of them. What then is 
our principle on this ground ? — assuredly not that 
such institutions, whether more or less strictly eccle- 
siastical, are of little importance ; or that they may 
be safely contemned, or hastily and recklessly over- 
thrown, or dismantled, or despoiled. Certainly we 
have no such meaning as this. Assuredly we hold 
no such loose doctrine as this. On the contrary, if 
the present were a fit occasion on which to express 
our opinion on questions of ecclesiastical polity, we 
might perhaps carry our doctrine much further than 
would be likely to meet the concurrence of many here 
present. We may therefore think ourselves free from 
any fair imputation of laxity of belief in regard to the 
high importance of existing religious institutions. 

But surely such institutions, at the best, are only 
means to an end ; and the end must be greater than 
the means, always. Such institutions moreover, in- 
asmuch as they have a local limitation, and are more 
or less intimately interwoven with whatever belongs 
to the civil and social existence of the people among 
whom they are found, and as they are administered, 
from year to year, by men — not inspired, they are 
liable to sway, on this side and on that ; and do 
in fact partake of the dangerous heavings by which 
all human affairs are so often brought into jeopardy. 
It cannot therefore be wise to put our Christianity, 



CHRISTIANITY. 



185 



without reserve, on board even the fairest and best 
navigated ecclesiastical institution tliathas ever braved 
the storms. 

What are the lessons which history teaches us on 
this point ? What has come of the experiment to 
entrust a visible universal church with the spiritual 
w^eifare of the human race ? How has the church of 
Rome acquitted herself of this usurped trust ? The 
foulest corruptions, the most extraordinary blasphe- 
mies, the most atrocious crimes, and the darkest 
errors, doctrinal and moral, and all perpetuated 
through a long course of ages, these have been the 
fruits of the theory vvhich would lodge an irrespon- 
sible and absolute power over Christianity with 
fallible man. 

Christianity we must believe to be greater, and 
more permanent, and of wider extent, than any means 
that can be devised for maintaining, or for diffusing 
it. And in proportion as the Gospel is understood, 
in its purity and in its power — in proportion as it is 
felt to be a spiritual religion, this independence of 
whatever is local and visible will the more appear ; — 
not indeed to the disparagement of visible institu- 
tions ; but to the higher glory of the spiritual 
reality. 

The w^armest supporters of those associations for 
the propagation of religious truth, which distinguish 
our times, are not so fond as to imagine that the 
Gospel is all risked in their bark ; or that the decay 
or dispersion of these societies, how much soever to 
be lamented, would seal its fate in the world ! 



186 



ON SPIRITUAL 



Christianity, which has survived all empires, and 
all forms of opinion, and all human institutions, not 
only will survive all, but is at every moment supe- 
rior to all, and must be allowed to take its high 
course, whether these institutions move with it, or 
are broken on their way. 

We must therefore, in connexion with this im- 
portant topic, once again, and finally, allude to those 
lately revived opinions to which we have several times 
adverted, as being peculiarly opposed to the progress 
of spiritual — of genuine Christianity. 

It seems scarcely to need proof, that any system 
of opinions, the purport and tendency of which is to 
give an unusual prominence, and a paramount im- 
portance to visible institutions, and especially as 
historically transmitted and geographically defined, 
and which, with a severe consistency, denies the very 
name of Christian to whatever may be found beyond 
its pale, or may not acknowledge its jurisdiction, that 
such a system, so far as it takes effect, stands op- 
posed to whatever is the most auspicious in the pre- 
sent age ; and if permitted to work its will, must 
turn back the current of human affairs — a thousand 
years, and would confine the blessings of the Gospel 
within limits narrower than those of ancient Judaism. 
These exclusive opinions, so fondly embraced by 
many, are indeed — a discipline of the secret," 
likely enough to bury the Gospel in a cloister, along 
with the last hopes of happiness for mankind. 

Whoever does not admit the independence of 
Christianity, as to the visible means of its mainte- 



CHRISTIANITY. 



187 



nance, and its superiority to all such means, reduces 
himself to the sad necessity of rejecting, even the 
most convincing evidence which may attest the 
triumphs of the Gospel under forms which he does 
not allow to be legitimate. The consequence must 
be, not indeed that such successes of " unauthentic 
zeal" are stayed in their course till he approves them; 
— but that he himself is driven further and further 
from whatever is substantial, whatever is benign, 
whatever is reasonable in the Christian system, until 
he finds a gloomy home, not in a church — but in a 
sepulchre. 

No position can be imagined more undesirable, or 
indeed fearful, than will be that occupied by very 
many, should pure Christianity rapidly spread in the 
heathen world, under what they are pleased to call 
a irregular ministrations." Such persons, rendered 
only so much the more obdurate by the copious 
evidence that is reaching them of the falseness of 
their theory, w^ould be driven, not im.probably, in 
desperation, to take part with the open enemies of 
all truth. 

Christians better taught, are prepared to hail with 
unfeigned, and with unmixed pleasure, every instance, 
let it be found where it may, in which the lives and 
tempers of men are reformed on the Christian model ; 
and, in perfect consistency with their principles, they 
will always think it their duty and privilege to take 
part in any endeavours that are sincerely and pru- 
dently instituted for imparting to the ignorant the 
blessings of truth. 



188 



ON SPIRITUAL 



How many perplexities are evaded by a hearty 
recognition of our axiom — That the Gospel is always 
more than the instrumentalities it employs ! How 
much peace of conscience is connected with a steady 
adherence to the belief, That the rescue of immortal 
souls from sin and misery is a work which, when 
effected by Sovereign Mercy ^, we never need scruple 
to rejoice in ! 

It cannot well be doubted that the purest forms 
of Christianity, whatever they are, will, on the 
whole, be the most efficacious in extending it ; if 
therefore we suppose all true Christians to be 
governed by the simple rule of aiding to promote 
the Gospel, under whatsoever form they see it to be 
advancing the most auspiciously — then it must hap- 
pen that — The purest form of Christianity will, in 
the end, draw around itself all, or the greater num- 
ber of sincere Christians ; and so, by this simple 
process, the much desired church unity would be 
brought about, not by polemical, but by evangelical 
triumphs. 

V. 

We come then to mention the fifth of those happy 
distinctions of Spiritual Christianity which warrant a 
reasonable hope of its diffusion, with all the blessings 
that attend it, throughout the earth. — 

Spiritual Christianity offers a ground of cordial 
combination, for all purposes of religious benevolence, 
among its true adherents. 

We have here to do with one of those frequent 



CHRISTIANITY. 



189 



instances in which a lule that, in theory, may seem 
beset with difficulties, ceases to be so, when honestly 
reduced to practice. While men of cold hearts and 
narrow understandings are propounding interminable 
questions, as to the possibility of giving contentment 
to the exquisite delicacy of their "consciences," when 
they are required to aid and assist in some good work 
— Christian men, whose consciences are informed by 
the instincts of love, find abundant comfort and pleasure 
in joining hands with their brethren, whenever any 
labours of charity demand their cooperation. 

We do not hold ourselves bound to attempt a 
reply to the question of sanctimonious selfishness — 
" Who is my brother ? w^ho is my neighbour ?" For 
the most exact and elaborate answer must fail to 
supply what is really wanting in the querist — the 
heart of a Christian ; and as to those in whose 
bosoms such a heart beats, they never in fact put 
any such question. 

In giving effect to the Christian principle of co- 
operation in works of charity, tw^o conditions are 
always supposed: — the Jirst is, that those who are 
thus summoned to "strive together" for promoting 
the welfare of their fellow-men are so far animated 
by Christian motives, and are so far governed by 
Christian principles, as to satisfy their brethren as 
to their claim to be treated with cordial afifection. 
Verbal specifications of belief, on secondary points, 
are superseded by the confidence which a truly 
Christian deportment inspires. Nothing can be 
more frigid, or im.pertinent, or arrogant, than the 



190 



ON SPIRITUAL 



question — *^ Can I join hands with — Christ's true 
disciples, differing from me in points of belief ?" 

The second condition of Christian combinations 
for promoting benevolent designs, is — a genuine 
warmth of the benevolent affections, in those who so 
combine. We are not afraid to affirm it as a general 
truth that, where good men are seen withdrawing 
from this, that, and the other labours of love, on the 
plea of conscientious scruples, the moral nature with 
them will be found to be of small dimensions, or of 
slender proportions. If the moral temperament be 
vigorous, and the understanding not infirm, great 
motives will overrule inferior motives, and the im- 
pulses of benevolence will, with an irresistible 
momentum, break through those snares for the con- 
science which the Adversary, when driven to employ 
his last expedients, spreads in the way of Christian 
enterprises. 

Hitherto, although frequently alluding to them, 
we have not distinctly spoken of those enterprises 
of Christian zeal and benevolence which stand forth 
as so remarkable a feature of the moral history of 
the present age, and which are its glory. We are 
compromised with none of these institutions ; — -we 
are pledged to none, as apologists ; and yet are bound 
to all as Christians. None commands our servile or 
partisanlike support : — each commands our cordial 
good wishes, and the utmost aid we could give. 

These pious and charitable associations are, col- 
lectively, the expression of a widely-diffused, and 
christianlike benevolence, which is indeed the praise 



CHKISTIANITY. 



191 



of Britain^ and the admiration of the world ; and 
which shall be the theme of posterity. Compared 
with any enterprises which heretofore have combined 
the hearts and energies of a people, is not the 
missionary enterprise noble and generous in its 
conception — heaven-like in its object and temper — 
unblamable in the mieans it adopts, and most benign, 
so far as it prospers, in its actual results ? 

And why has it not prospered more? Many rea- 
sons should be assigned in reply ; but we are here 
content to say, That, undoubtedly, and not forgetting 
our dependence upon the divine aid, it would so 
prosper if it commanded, to a greater extent, and 
in proportion to its indisputable merits, the resources, 
the influence, the intelligent cooperation of the 
upper and educated classes of England. 

The laborious endeavours now making, at so 
many points, to diffuse the blessings of the Gospel, 
and with them the blessings of social order, peace, 
and wealth through the world— these endeavours, 
on every principle of mere reason, of benevolence, 
and of Christian feeling, deserve — nay, demand, far 
more support than they actually receive from the 
noble, and the learned — from those whose position in 
society, or whose accomplishments and talents, would 
render their cordial cooperation incalculably important. 

What, if some of these societies may have erred ? — 
What if we relish not their style, or distaste their 
proceedings, or question some of their averments ? 
We must not look at any human agencies in so sickly 
a manner, as would lead us to abandon what is great 



192 



ON SPIRITUAL 



and good, on tlie plea of blemishes from which 
nothing human is exempt. Posterity, \^e may be 
sure, will not thus look at the missionary zeal of the 
nineteenth century ; but will rather regard the 
hroad intention^ and the prominent purport of these 
labours of love. If these labours fail of their desired 
success, yet the facts of such an endeavour having 
been made, will not be blotted from the page of his- 
tory ; — and let us think of it as certain, that those 
wdio shall read that page, will deal, not very gently, 
with any by whose immediate fault so bright a hope 
of renovation for the world, was suffered to expire. 
But on the contrary, if this endeavour succeed, 
and if, as we firmly believe, the present evangelic 
labours of this country are as the dawn of day in the 
world's history — if indeed we are now standing, as on 
the very confines of light and darkness — if long cen- 
turies of moral desolation are to be followed by far 
longer eras of truth, virtue, peace, let us take care 
that we ourselves be not fixed upon those confines, as 

pillars of salt" — the monuments of unbelief and 
selfish infatuation ! 

There is one aspect of the evangelizing associa- 
tions now referred to, which does not seem to have 
attracted the attention it deserves ; and which, as we 
venture to affirm, might not improperly be seriously 
considered at the present moment by the upper and 
educated classes. We refer to the reflex influence of 
these combinations upon the classes to which mainly 
they owe their support, and by which they are 
governed. 



CHRISTIANITY. 



193 



The great extent and depth of this reflected in- 
fluence can be estimated only by those (and but 
imperfectly even by such) whose position in society, 
and whose habits have enabled them, at leisure, to 
become acquainted with the sentiments and intellec- 
tual condition of the masses from which Missionary 
Societies draw four-fifths of their revenues. These 
contributors, ranging from the artisan class, and 
upward toward the higher grades, and including a 
fair proportion of the moderate opulence and average 
intelligence of the country, are doing for themselves, 
full as much, in every sense, as they are doing for 
the heathen world ; — and we say this without intend- 
ing any disparagement of the missionary work abroad. 

We could not easily over-rate the extent or im- 
portance of that moral and intellectual advancement 
which, in the course of the last thirty or forty years, 
has resulted directly from the diff*usion of the mis- 
sionary spirit in England. It has carried with it, 
and has conveyed to many thousands of the middle 
orders, a large amount and variety of general know- 
ledge, geographical, historical, statistical ; it has 
vastly expanded the modes of thinking usual with 
these orders ; it has ennobled their sentiments ; it has 
habituated them to generous, and, in a true sense, 
to liberal courses of behaviour ; it has thrown into 
discredit many frivolous or sensual employments, or 
amusements ; it has trained thousands of young per- 
sons in the inestimably important habit of caring, in 
a sensitive and active manner, for the welfare of 
others ; and has much diverted from the channel of 

K 



194 



ON SPIRITUAL 



sordid selfishness, the ordinary current of thought. If 
we will hear and believe it, the missionary temper, 
diffused as it is on all sides, although attaching but 
to a portion of the people, has at length educated a 
class of citizens which, from its breadth of feeling, 
its fair intelligence, its familiarity with the course of 
events throughout the world, and its high feeling of 
whatever is just, humane, and christianlike, may 
prove itself, in future perils of the state, the prin- 
cipal stay of a wise and religious government. 

The influence of the missionary work in sustaining 
and extending some religious communities which, 
^ ears ago, were threatened with extinction, is not 
one of the least remarkable of its effects ; and if, at 
an early period of these evangelizing institutions, the 
several evangelic bodies had so seen their corporate 
interests, as to have amalgamated, on this ground — 
to have dismissed their differences as frivolous — to 
have consolidated their resources, to have distributed 
the work before them on some consistent principle of 
the division of labour ; and in a word to have chalked 
their path of benevolent universal conquest, from east 
to west, from north to south — if these things had 
happened, statesmen might have seen, with amaze- 
ment, the government of the world in some mea- 
sure taken out of their hands, by a moral power of 
continually increasing energy. 

No such concentration or condensation of the 
evangelic zeal has had place. But it is not certain 
that it may not in future. Whether it does or not, 
it is unquestionable that this benevolent care for 



CHRISTIANITY. 



195 



the world, now exercised almost exclusively by the 
middle classes — this effective, and morally real colo- 
nial administration, cannot but confer a force, real 
also, upon those in whose hands it rests ; and there- 
fore it does not leave the social balance between 
them and the upper classes altogether unaffected. 

Whatever inference these considerations might 
suggest, it is abundantly certain that there can be 
but one mode in which an influence so wide and im- 
portant can be shared by those who might think a 
good portion of it their due. — The power we are 
speaking of is — a moral and religious pov)er ; and if 
we except some very transient participation of it, 
it can be wielded only in the mode of a sincere, 
ingenuous, and religious sympathy with the great 
purposes that are the objects of it. 

No factitious zeal, no politic compliances, no stoop- 
ing to conquer, could avail for the purpose intended, 
or beyond the term of a few months. The evangelic 
work, inseparable as it is from Christianity when not 
curbed by despotism, would quickly fail, and reach 
its end, unless carried forward by a genuine religious 
impulse. - 

There is then a vast movement going on near to 
us : — it embraces the earth : — it throws back upon its 
originators a proportionate moral power, a power not 
very remote, in some of its bearings, from political 
power; and yet it is such as can be exercised by 
none but those whose religious convictions are sin- 
cere and vigorous — by none but Christian men! 
The glare and glitter of life may conceal these 

K 2 



196 



ON srmiTUAL 



realities from our view ; but the more they are 
considered, and the better they are understood, the 
more will they seem to deserve the serious regard 
of those who would not choose to be ignorant of 
what may even suddenly come to press itself upon 
their attention. 

At the commencement of these Lectures we 
affirmed, what we most fully believe to be a fact 
— the inseparable connexion of Christianity with 
the welfare, nay, with the political existence of the 
British empire, and its cherished institutions. A 
course of events rapidly evolving, and tending to- 
ward some unknown issue, is convincing all parties 
— That a merely secular, or political and heartless 
Christianity, will neither subserve the purposes of 
religion, nor even be able to sustain itself against 
the pressure of many hostile forces.— It is proved, 
it is understood — it is admitted, that our Christianity 
must have a firm hold of our most sincere convictions 
— that it must be deeply seated in our affections— 
that it must command us as an independent power, 
as a positive authority, superior to secular influence, 
and as a principle which we may neither modify, 
nor compromise ; but which we must honour by an 
implicit, yet reasonable homage. 

This understood, as it seems to be on all sides 
among those who seriously think on the subject, a 
choice is to be made between those two forms of 
Christianity which alone are positive, authoritative, 
independent, and in a word potent, or which possess 
any intrinsic energy. 



CHRISTIANITY. 



197 



These two competing systems, utterly incompa- 
tible one with the other, as they are, and founded 
upon principles exclusive one of the other, and 
which have never consisted the one with the other, 
even for a day, have been brought into vehement 
collision by the controversies of the last seven years. 
It is a collision for w^hich all things, although we 
saw it not before-hand, were ripe ; and the issue of 
which must speedily bisect the professedly Christian 
world ; and at no very remote period after this par- 
tition has been effected, one of the two must meet 
its fate. 

We shall not incur the risk of being accused of 
misrepresentation in attempting any definition or 
description of that one of these forms which we 
regard as an ti christian. But how imperfectly so- 
ever our task in the present instance may have been 
performed, we can scarcely have altogether failed to 
convey, in an intelligible manner, what we regard as 
essential to that other form of our religion which w^e 
assume to be alone genuine, apostolic, and spiritual ; — 
the Christianity which, as we believe, will be found 
in the inspired pages, by those who, in humble re- 
liance upon the teaching of the Holy Spirit, give 
themselves to the serious perusal of the only authentic 
Rule of Faith. 



NOTES. 



Note to Page 34. 

Even if we were to apply the phrase " Moral Evidence " in 
the vague manner in which it is often applied to human tes- 
timony, under whatever circumstances rendered; it must be 
granted, in very many instances, to reach the highest point of 
certainty. If many hundred persons, in dismay and disorder, 
pass my gate during the day, and all affirm the same thing^ — 
That London has been destroyed by an earthquake ; — if some 
of these homeless persons coolly and particularly describe the 
catastrophe, while the phrenzied shrieks of others attest the 
fact in another manner — is this amount of testimony to be 
held as still questionable, because it is nothing more than 
" moral evidence ?" At the moment when the first band of 
these wanderers came up, I might have been employed in 
following a mathematical demonstration. In turning from 
Euclid to listen to these tales of woe, I do indeed turn from 
one species of proof to another ; but do I also descend from 
certainties, to mere probabilities ? None would say this. 

As to facts transmitted by books, the certainty of them 
may be of the very highest kind, even when the mass of 
evidence, or its apparent hulk, is very small. In such in- 
stances certainty results from the circumstances of the case; 
and it is to be remembered that it is in no degree liable to be 
lessened by mere lapse of time. The existence of Shake- 
spear's Richard III., in the time of James L, may now be 



200 



KOTES. 



ascertained without a doubt ; — but, supposing our literature 
to pass down entire to a distant age, tbe proof of tbis fact 
will be as good then, as it is to-day. Or otherwise to state 
the same case, we may now be as sure of the antiquity of the 

Clouds " of Aristophanes, as we are of the date of the " Merry 
Wives of Windsor." And if a question relate to the genuine- 
ness of a single verse, a very small amount of satisfactory 
critical proof, may be enough to exclude all reasonable scep- 
ticism, and to warrant the decision — " It is absolutely certain 
that this verse was from the hand of the author." 

We greatly misjudge historical questions — 

— When we assume them to be not susceptible of conclusive 
proof because established by Testimony, or Moral Evidence : — 

— When we hesitate to receive them as certain on account 
of the mere lapse of Time ; or — 

— When we suppose historical certainty to depend upon the 
larger or smaller amount, or bulk of the evidence adduced. 
Good proof is good, whether it fill half a page, or a volume ; 
and whether it have stood on a page fifty, or two thousand 
years. 



Note to Page 40. 

That corruption of the Christian religion which its inspired 
teachers predicted as immediately to follow its first promulga- 
tion, is in one of these prophetic passages, called a " mystery 
of iniquity," which is the inspired designation also of the 
ripened "abominations" of the Papacy; and it is remarkable 
that this endeavour to hold back the Truth — to "reserve" the 
principal elements of Christianity for a privileged class, has 
been the characteristic of each successive form of the apostasy 
from the second century to the nineteenth. Not less remarkable 
is the progression of these endeavours from what was a very 
natural imitation of the philosophic economy of the same age, 
to its consummation in the stern spiritual despotism which 



NOTES. 



201 



lodged the key of knowledge in the hands of the Vicar of 
Christ." 

Instead of "preaching the Gospel" to the people, without 
reserve, and in all simplicity, as the Apostles had done, the 
Rulers of the Church, ambitious of the dignity belonging to 
the Teachers of a profound enigmatic doctrine, drew a line 
around themselves and the favoured few — the "initiated," to 
whom the depths of this new philosophy were to be opened. 
But this proceeding was alone enough to vitiate the Christian 
ministry, compelling, as it did, the Teacher to impart to the 
mass of the people something less than the Truth, and to the 
initiated — something more. The great principles of the Gospel 
were regarded as too sacred for the populace, and were felt to 
be too simple — or too little in the style of the philosophy of 
the age, to satisfy the "itching ears" of those who expected 
profundities. 

When the gnostic infection was admitted by the Church, it 
hrought with it a rule of caste still more injurious in its effects ; 
for it assumed the fact of a natural inequality among men — as 
"spiritual," or as "physical" and animal, by destination of 
birth. The mass of men could never be taught—" the Truth." 
This doctrine, directly opposed as it is to the first principle of 
the Gospel, could not consist with even an approximation to 
apostolic simplicity and evangelic zeal. From the time that 
it gained ascendency in the Church little was seen within it 
but spiritual arrogance, on the part of the few, and the most 
abject prostration of the many at the feet of the clergy and 
the monks. 

Under the ascetic discipline, which reached its mature con- 
dition in the fourth century, the gnostic principle of reserving 
"Truth" as the distinction of a class, assumed the distinctness 
proper to the rules of a visible institute. The monks were 
the only Christians, in the full sense of the term ; while the 
herd of mankind might be allowed to gather the crumbs of 
instruction, that fell from their master's table. 

The last step of this doctrine of darkness was that which 
confided all knowledge to the keeping of "the Church," that 
is to say — of the hierarchy, governed by a single will, and 
armed with absolute and terrible powers, secular and spiritual. 



202 



NOTES. 



It is not easy to fix tlie moment at wliicli this empire of 
night dates its commencement ; but the early part of the 
thirteenth century may be named as the hour of the most 
pitchy blackness. 



Note to Page 77. 

The Protestant Church of England does not simply affirm 
the " Romish doctrine " concerning " worshipping and adora- 
tion, as well of Images as of Relics, and also Invocation of 
Saints," to be ^'a fond thing;" but that these superstitions — 
elsewhere pointedly and universally reprobated, had been 
vainly invented.'" By whom then invented? It is not the 
usage of ingenuous writers or speakers, when they would 
designate those who may have given the last finish to a work 
which others had long before originated, to call them its in- 
ventors. Whatever absurdities may have attached to the 
^< Romish" doctrine of the invocation of saints, or to the 
" Romish " practice of the adoration of relics — the doctrine, in 
its plenitude of impiety, and the practice, with all its shocking 
enormities, are at least as ancient as that age from which it is 
said we should do well to learn our divinity, and our modes of 
worship, rather than from the age of the Reformation. 

This now professed preference can mean nothing, if it does 
not mean that the invocation of saints, and the worshipping 
of relics which the Reformers indignantly rejected, and 
which the Nicene divines as sedulously promoted, should 
be, by ourselves, religiously restored. 

Finding the intended limits of this volume already exceeded, 
I am compelled to refer the reader for the evidence bearing on 
this point, to the Sixth Number of Ancient Christianity," 
in which a sample of the frightful idolatries of the fourth cen- 
tury is furnished. These, I think, will bear out the assertion, 
That, if the Christianity of the Nicene Church were restored 
in England, the difference between England, and Spain, Italy, 
or Belgium, would be perceptible only to the keenest eyes. 



NOTES. 



20Z 



Antiquity and Romanism diiier not so much as the Rehgion 
of English Roman Catholics differs from the Popery of Irish 
Roman Catholics. And in truth the gross superstitions and 
shocking abuses of the fourth century far more nearly resem- 
ble Irish, than they do English CathoHcism. It were there- 
fore better for us to accept these same doctrines and practices 
in their modern, than in their ancient guise. Both however 
are absolutely exclusive of apostolic Christianity. 



THE END. 



K. CLAY, PRINTER, EB.EAD STREET HILL. 



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